


What Came Next

by Iomhar



Series: Alternate Universe Hunger Games [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: (I mean for the character not the author I swear), (i'm sorry), Action & Romance, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Child Abuse, District 7 (Hunger Games), Escapism into fiction, Everybody in this story needs serious therapy, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Hunger Games worldbuilding, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Narcissism, Original Arena(s) (Hunger Games), Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, The Capitol (Hunger Games), The author doesn't normally write romance but it's happening now, Verbal Abuse, Weddings, Worldbuilding, it was never meant to be this long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 121
Words: 294,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iomhar/pseuds/Iomhar
Summary: Juniper, victor of the 140th Hunger Games, returns to the Capitol not as a mentor but to keep her fellow victor company for the 142nd Hunger Games.  This story explores the behind-the-scenes of mentoring, a weird pseudo-romantic relationship between victors, and the cruelty of the people in power.This is a sequel to a previous work,The Year After.  I have included a summary of the previous story as the "Chapter 2" of this work.Part I (Ch 1-56) - The Hunger GamesPart II (Ch 57-99) - The Capitol / WeddingPart III (Ch 100-119) - AfterwardsThank You & Notes (Ch 120)Character List (Ch 121)This is part of a Hunger Games alternate universe I created.  In general, there is no set reading order (with the exception of the one story mentioned above).
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Alternate Universe Hunger Games [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886524
Comments: 558
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am excited to continue Juniper and Pitch's story. If you haven't gotten a chance, please read the first work about them: [**The Year After**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25176202) If you don't want to read it for some reason, or if you need a refresher/recap, I have provided a summary to the work as my Chapter 2 of this story.
> 
> This work will involve/mention several mental health issues including what is currently listed in the tags. I will try, as usual, to put a warning in the notes at the beginning of chapters that I feel are most problematic. I should also say that I really don't know what this story has in store for it besides a few plot points because I come up with ideas as I go. Therefore, new tags can be added at any time. I would like to make a couple of notes for things that I haven't really tagged (because I wasn't sure how):
> 
> 1\. Whenever Juniper is stressed, she stops eating; this is an FYI to anyone who might find this an issue.
> 
> 2\. This story explores the fallout related to Pitch's years of being "sold" to the Capitol elite (i.e., forced prostitution). Although it is not the sole focus of this story, it does feature fairly prominently with references/discussions/etc. to rape/non-con. As of yet, there have not been any scenes of rape/non-con.
> 
> 3\. One of the characters has a history of suicide attempts. This is mentioned several times but isn't necessarily tagged in the chapters.
> 
> I always appreciate comments. It's fun to know that people are following along. :)

This year I am not mentoring. I fulfilled my obligation last year, and the other victors have relieved me from mentorship duties for the time being. District 7 is lucky: we have so many living victors to choose from that we don’t have to mentor every single year. Most of us, at least. This is Pitch’s third year in a row, and I don’t see why Liberty won’t get her ass into gear and offer to take his place for once. Even Bris vanishes whenever the conversation of mentoring comes up. So now Pitch and Elm must go to the Capitol as District 7’s mentors.

But this year, despite not having any obligation to mentor, I am going to the Capitol regardless.

My parents exchange uneasy looks as I fill my satchel with a few novels from the shelf in the den. Once I get to the Capitol, I’ll have all the clothes I’ll need, so I don’t bother with anything like that. Just books to keep me company for the ride until I can find a few minutes to slip into a bookstore.

“Are you sure, June?” Mom asks nervously. She and Dad stand together near the sofa. Concern twists their brows as they watch me fasten my bag shut, struggling to adjust the buttons around the bulge of paperbacks.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” I assure her as I adjust the strap across my chest.

“But, honey, if you’re not mentoring, you don’t have to go,” Dad tries.

“Dad. Really,” I say. I smooth out the front of my blouse and walk towards the doorway, pausing to kiss them each on the cheek.

My assurances convince neither of my parents. They exchange worried glances with each other, and Dad shakes his head.

“After what they did to you and Pitch last year?” he asks. “June, I hesitate to tell you what to do because you are technically an adult, but you’re my daughter and I don’t want you going back to that place if you don’t need to.”

I stop, no longer quite as eager to leave the house, and study them. Dark circles ring their deep brown eyes. Mom has drawn her hair back in a hasty bun, and Dad hasn’t finished dressing for today’s event. The sight of the two of them, both unkempt with anxiety but trying to keep up appearances, kneads my stomach. My poor parents. Every year, they watch me go to the Capitol. Every year, it tears them apart. This is my second year as victor, but even though they know I’ll return alive, it still kills them to see the way the Capitol treats the district residents who are unfortunate enough to be drawn into the Hunger Games, either as tribute or mentor.

“I can’t leave Pitch to fend for himself,” I tell them, but my explanation only earns me more looks, this time more pleading.

Neither of my parents approve of my relationship with my former mentor. At first they hesitated to say anything because of how shitty last year went and they knew that Pitch and I supported each other, but over time they’ve managed to be more vocal about it, especially when they found out how many nights I spent over at his house. I tried to tell them that it wasn’t what it seemed, but they didn’t buy it. The next thing I knew, they had arranged for me to attend the district’s university an hour away. Whenever I’d return on the weekends, I found my time filled with get-togethers and events with extended family, massive amounts of music lessons, and monitored visits with Pitch. They invited him over to dinner once a week, and they gave us our time alone afterwards, but both of us knew that they didn’t approve of whatever weird pseudo-romantic-but-mostly-platonic relationship we had.

How could I blame them? Pitch is fifteen years older than me. He has been mentoring tributes for many, many years. It creeps them out, and if I’m being honest, it kind of does the same for me, too. And yet I find myself back with him whenever the moment arises because he is the only person in this damned district that seems to understand what I went through, despite the four other living victors in this neighborhood.

The worst part is that I can’t tell my parents that whatever they saw on TV is a sliver of how nightmarish reality actually is in the Capitol. I can’t tell them that mentoring is one of the most soul-shattering tasks that one can ever have, and that it takes its toll on you in unexpected ways. Being with Pitch is the only reprieve I get from the constant onslaught of horror that plagues my nights and haunts my memories.

“I’ll be able to see some of my friends while I’m there,” I say to them in their silence. “Esther is mentoring again, so she’ll definitely be there. I don’t know about Isolde as far as if she’s mentoring, but I think most of the District 1 victors go there every year regardless.”

“Alright, sweetie,” Mom says to me. Knowing that two girls around my age will be there and I won’t be spending all my time with Pitch seems to put her at ease, if only a little. That’s all I need. Because while I can walk out this door right here and now and they can’t do a damned thing, I know that I won’t leave them on bad terms, either. Mom comes over to me and gives me a hug. “But you call us if you need anything. And come back right away if things get to be too much.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say to her as I hug her back.

“Do you want me to drive you to the reaping?” Dad asks when it’s his turn to hug me. He gives me a kiss on the temple and releases me.

I shake my head and adjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder. “No thanks. I prefer walking,” I say. “I love you; see you later.”

My parents say goodbye, and I bound out of the house and down the steps into the front yard. The neighborhood is unusually silent; all the other victors and their families have headed to the district square, and if I don’t walk quickly, I’ll be late. I don’t know what the punishment is for that, but I sure as hell don’t want to find out.

The route to the district square is a pleasant one, if you could forget where you were going and why. I head off the main road and onto a nature trail that weaves its way through thick forests. It rained recently, and the petrichor fills my nostrils. I keep my pace brisk and my steps even.

A few minutes into my walk, a figure becomes visible down the path. Large pine trees on either side of the dirt trail cast shadows, but enough light filters in between the branches that I easily recognize Pitch. I speed up slightly so that I catch up with him.

“Hey,” I say, falling in place next to my former mentor.

“Hi, Juniper,” Pitch says. He smiles. “Sorry for not waiting up; I thought your parents were going to give you a ride. It’s—”

His smile falters as his eyes drop to the bag at my hip. The thick strap digs into my shoulder, but the great bulge of the bag itself means that it can only be filled with items of my favorite pastime. Nobody needs this many books to go attend the reaping for a couple hours. No, this will at least tide me over for a few days.

“Juniper, you’re not coming to the Capitol this year,” he says firmly.

“Now you’re starting to sound like my parents,” I say.

“After what happened last year—”

“Okay, now you are _definitely_ sounding like my parents,” I groan. “That’s weird. Can you please stop?”

Pitch slows down and turns to face me. I sigh.

“Juniper, you know that if you go back there, you’re not just going to be subjected to shitty interviews and rumors, but also to the ‘admirers’ you managed to evade last year,” he says to me. The seriousness weighs down his voice, and I know that he only wants to keep me safe from the wandering hands of Quintus Laurentinus. Or worse. Some nights, I wake up from my nightmares feeling the disgusting man’s warm breath on my cheek.

“I know,” I tell him, equally serious. “And I also know that you can’t keep me from boarding that train, so can you at least respect me enough to make my own decisions?”

“I’m not—” he hesitates, thinks about it, and then changes his mind. Finally he starts walking again and says, “Come on; we don’t want to be late.”

We fall into step and walk in silence for the remainder of the way to the district square. To think that one year ago today, I took this same route knowing that I’d be going to the Capitol to mentor kids against my will. . . . And now I’m going freely. To a pit of nightmares and monsters. I try to hold onto the smell of the forest, the sound of the little animals darting about, the crunch of pine needles under our shoes. All things I won’t get in the coming weeks unless I opt for Capitol-manufactured garbage that is little more than a tarnished reflection of reality.

The noise of thousands of people grows louder as we approach the square. The reaping is a somber event, but quiet people still make considerable sound compared to the stillness of the woods. When the trees give way to streets, we cut across a back alley and head towards the stage that the district officials erect every year for this event.

I climb up the steps after Pitch and we find our seats with the other victors, arranged in numerical order by year of victory. This year Elm sits between us. I shrug off my bag and set it next to the leg of my folding chair to give my weary shoulder a break before sitting down. Elm gives us each a polite ‘hello’ as we settle in. I return it with a small smile. Nothing too jovial for reaping day, of course.

The crowd drones with quiet mumbles as kids try to reassure each other that everything is okay and that they won’t get reaped. Thousands of eligible teenagers fill the square, and thousands more are in overflow areas. With such a great number of potential tributes, the likelihood of any one of them being chosen is very small. And yet that does little to calm the terror in them. I feel it too. My own chest flutters as though I am still of eligible reaping age. Just like it did last year. I wonder if this sensation of fear and panic will ever truly go away, or if it will continue to buzz through my body every time I step onto this stage.

A hush falls across the crowd as a woman I’ve never seen before takes the stage next to our mayor. At first this confuses me, but then I realize that this is our new escort, Daphne. I have only heard of her by name. She must be around my height, but she’s very muscular for a Capitol resident. The sleeves of her tinfoil-silver suit end just below her shoulders, exposing serious biceps. Long, matching gloves hide her hands and lower arms. I tune out most of what anybody says, but when it’s her turn to speak, she has a very even, clear voice. She intrigues me; this is nothing like our last escort, Lala, whose extravagance extended to every aspect of her being.

But then those silver gloves dip into the great glass ball that holds the names of all of the girls in the district. . . .

“Our female tribute for District 7 is . . . Wisteria Smith!”

It takes a minute, but then the crowd parts every-so-slightly and an older girl makes her way through. Fear clouds her face, but all I can think is, _Thank heavens it’s not another twelve-year-old._ She holds her head up, but I can’t read her expression.

The girl climbs up the steps and takes her place on one side of the escort.

The hand goes into the reaping ball, and a moment later, the escort continues, “Our male tribute for District 7 is . . . Sage Thornethorn.”

From somewhere in the crowd, somebody wails. The sharp pierce tears through the silence and rips into my chest. I clasp my hands together and brace myself. But the only sounds that follow are somebody’s hysterical sobs, and then a couple minutes later, the tribute emerges from the farthest reaches of the crowd, no doubt brought over from one of the overflow areas. He takes great care to concentrate on the ground in front of him as he walks, not daring the meet the eye of anyone in the crowd or on stage. As he grows closer, I note that he, too, is older than last year’s male tribute. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. But he’s well-fed and looks decently athletic. The dais shakes with his solid footsteps, and he takes his place on the other side of Daphne.

Watching these two kids standing here sickens me. They hold themselves up stoically with their chins raised, but from this angle you can see how they quiver. They’re not stupid. They know that they don’t have a whole lot of a chance to return to District 7. They will most likely die brutal and disgusting deaths in front of the entire nation. I tune out the rest of the reaping and watch the male and female District 7 tributes hold their own in front of thousands of their peers.

At last the reaping draws to an end, and we have our first glances of the tributes who will be marched to their death for the entertainment of the Capitol.

I bound off the stage and wait for the other victors in the shadow of a large pine. The backdrop of the stage blocks my view of the crowd and, thus, their view of me. Pitch walks over to me and the two of us stand there without words. Heaviness presses against my chest as I think of the tributes now trying to process what happened to them as they wait for their friends and loved ones to come say goodbye.

“At least this year they have a chance,” I mutter.

“Juniper . . .” Pitch warns.

I know. I can’t get my hopes up, no matter how much I want to believe they have a shot at victory. It only ends in pain. I close my eyes and take a second to try to redirect my mind to something else because already I feel anger rising within me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the summary of the previous work, The Year After. It will contain spoilers to the previous work. Major spoilers. So if you do not want spoilers, please read the previous story before continuing with this story.

> **Summary for The Year After**
> 
> This is the summary for the previous work upon which this one is based which is the story of Juniper's first year as mentor. If you are interested in reading the previous work, here is the link: [The Year After](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25176202). This summary will, obviously, have spoilers.

It is the 141st Hunger Games and Juniper Sadik’s first year as mentor for District 7. Despite having a good number of living victors in District 7, scheduling conflicts with the others meant that Juniper would need to spend her first Hunger Games as victor performing the duties as mentor. Her co-mentor is Pitch Yassen, victor of the 125th Hunger Games, who had mentored Juniper the year before. The story opens on the day of the reaping in which Ponderosa Funar (Rosa) and Evergreen McConnell (Green), both twelve years old, are reaped for this year’s event. Juniper and Pitch are horrified that they will be mentoring two young children, but Pitch insists that they put on a brave face because they are their tributes’ last hopes.

Juniper deals with her own insecurities as she yearns to not be treated like a child but is completely overwhelmed by everything that goes on around her. Pitch continues to mentor her in how to be a mentor as they struggle to handle their young charges. Rosa is sweet and angelic while Green talks too much and can be overbearing. To their horror, rumors get out that one of their tributes saw them together (kissing? I don’t think I really say), which gets snapped up by the Capitol and spread around to every eager ear in the city. Juniper and Pitch assume that it is Green’s fault, particularly when Rosa tells Juniper that Green blabbed about her special skills to all the other tributes during training. Pitch makes the decision to spend more attention helping Juniper help Rosa given Green’s inability to keep his mouth shut. Things become more tense in the District 7 apartment when it becomes extremely clear that the escort, Lala, who fawns over the small children nonstop, only has the desire to advance her status and move to a “higher” district regardless of what happens to Rosa and Green. Then Juniper and Pitch find out that it was not Green who “blabbed” about Rosa’s skills but Rosa herself . . . she had spilled her own secret and led the mentors to think it was her district partner. Needless to say, the mentors are horrified to know that they made decisions on how they mentored their tributes (namely, spending more time on Rosa) based upon what they believed was the truth. As angry as Juniper is at Rosa for not only misleading them about Green but telling people that she has a thing for Pitch (which she doesn’t), she vows to the little girl that she will not abandon her as mentor.

The Hunger Games begin. Despite their low chances of surviving the bloodbath, both Green and Rosa escape. Green is allied with the District 12 male, Coal, and Rosa is allied with two eighteen-year-old girls, Nicola (District 5) and Taylor (District 8). The Hunger Games unfold. Both tributes do surprisingly well. Green ends up being killed by the District 10 male, leaving Rosa, the District 5 female, the District 10 male, and both from District 4 in the final five.

During her time in the Capitol, Juniper meets a wide cast of characters, from other victors (Isolde and Hammer of District 1, Elijah of District 5, Esther of District 8, etc.) to a bunch of Capitolites with dumb names. She slowly becomes used to being around the victors even though they initially intimidate her, but she struggles on handling herself near the Capitolites. One Capitolite has taken great fondness of her: a wealthy and powerful man by the name of Quintus Laurentinus. Pitch also reveals to her that he is sometimes forced into prostitution due to his popularity, and he often has to leave in the evenings in order to fulfill this obligation. (His Hunger Games was a Quarter Quell in which the twist was that the tributes were hand-picked by the Capitol. Thus, he was popular with them even before he became a victor. Now he’s popular in ways that he doesn’t really desire.) Meanwhile, the rumors about Juniper and Pitch only get more pronounced, mostly instigated by Lala who is convinced that they are crappy mentors because they must be having a lot of sex (they’re not).

Juniper has severe anger issues and struggles to keep herself in control. This becomes problematic many times since she is prone to violence when she can’t control herself. On one occasion, however, she punches Lala in the face when the woman walks in on her and Pitch sleeping (platonically) in the same bed and tells Pitch that if he spent more time mentoring and less time having sex with Juniper, Green wouldn’t have died. Pitch manages to get Juniper off the escort by throwing her into a wall which gives her a concussion and breaks several ribs. Juniper is tended to by Dr. Castillo. Pitch apologizes and explains that he needed to do something but didn’t mean to do so much damage. Juniper forgives him because everything is messed up and the world sucks. Also there are a lot of interviews where people like to bug them about their tributes and ask them way too many personal questions.

Meanwhile in the arena, Rosa holds her own quite well. She proves to be extremely manipulative, but also retains her childish innocence at the same time. This brings her a good deal of sponsors, and she makes it to the final five before she is killed by the District 4 female. Juniper is devastated by this, and Pitch barely gets her to hold herself together so they make their escape from the training center before Lala appears on them again.

They go to Isolde’s apartment. Pitch leaves for another appointment (aka, prostitution), and Juniper tries to sleep. She finds Isolde watching the Hunger Games and is disgusted that she’s doing it out of her own free will. Juniper and Isolde start talking. Through conversation, it is revealed that Juniper volunteered for her Hunger Games (something that was not revealed to the readers until now), and Juniper says that she did it because she hates the Capitol. (Juniper volunteered in place of a handicapped girl.) However, Juniper never considers herself a volunteer due to semantics: she never said “I volunteer.” Instead she just took the girl’s place on stage.

Over the next few days, there are parties, some apartment hunting, threats by Lala to have Juniper institutionalized for being “mentally unstable,” the end of the Hunger Games (the District 4 male, Fjord, is victor), and a few conversations between Juniper and Pitch. In one conversation, Pitch tells Juniper about a tribute he failed to mentor “right” because he had a mental breakdown. He tried to commit suicide twice after failing to get the mental help he needed. Then he was taken back to District 7 by one of the older victors and the Capitol sent Dr. Castillo who managed to help him. Another evening, Pitch returns to Juniper’s apartment drunk and says that he wants to kiss her, which freaks Juniper out and she locks herself in her room for the night. The next evening, Pitch explains that they’re going to have to take their fake relationship further, and if that’s the case, he wants to kiss her on their own terms and not because the Capitol forces them. Juniper doesn’t really agree with this mentality.

Juniper and Pitch are forced to go to a photoshoot. Lala is there overseeing them. She is furious at them for making her look like a fool by downplaying the violent outburst Juniper had towards her, and she says that she has assault charges on Juniper which she’ll only drop if Juniper and Pitch let everyone know how shitty of mentors they are and that Lala was the thing holding the District 7 team together. Then she separates them for the photoshoot. Juniper tries to comply but doesn’t do a very good job. After the photoshoot, Lala says that Pitch broke up with Juniper (she honestly believes that Juniper and Pitch are in love and that this will be a devastating blow); although Juniper doesn’t buy that it was Pitch’s decision, she has to go along with it. When she gets back to her apartment, Juniper finds Pitch taking his things. Pitch says he can’t be seen with her or Lala will make sure that the assault charges are pressed and Juniper is sent away for being mentally unstable. Juniper tells Pitch that they’re going to have to give Lala what she wants to make sure that she gets promoted and thus leave her and Pitch alone. Then she says that she wants to make sure to give Lala what she _doesn’t_ want; Juniper kisses Pitch. The two of them agree that they won’t do that again.

For the next couple days, Juniper and Pitch have to pretend that they hate each other. They, along with all the other victors, go to the Presentation of the Victor and the party at the Presidential Palace afterwards. At the party, Quintus L. makes moves on Juniper, but she stands up to him and says that he has to get the victors a garden in the training center, and then she’ll talk. (One of the things Quintus admires in Juniper is her “fight” so he is not nearly as offended as some in his position might be.) The next day, the victors go to the train station to return to their districts. Once again, Juniper and Pitch aren’t allowed near each other because they fear Lala’s threats. But when they get on the train and Juniper goes to her room, she realizes how terrible the past couple weeks have been and that she can’t isolate herself from the people who have helped her through it. So she tells Pitch that Lala can go fuck herself (Juniper has the attention of a far more powerful Capitolite who could overrule whatever Lala does), and she and Pitch spend the rest of the train ride together regardless of Lala’s presence.


	3. Chapter 3

Pitch, Elm, and I sit in the lounge car of the train and wait for the escort and tributes. Right now, the tributes say their goodbyes to their families and friends in the Justice Building. I don’t want to think about it, but it’s an inevitable heaviness that lingers about us.

“Juniper, I’m surprised you’re here,” Elm says. He speaks quietly and evenly. Maybe some would think he’s shy, but it’s just how he talks all the time unless you can find a way to get him riled up enough.

“I’m just coming along for the ride,” I tell him casually. But he looks between me and Pitch and then rolls his eyes. I guess Pitch and I are not that much of a secret, not that we ever tried to make it one.

The conversation turns to the two tributes, and I fall silent as I listen to the older victors discuss their initial reactions. They keep their voices low on the off chance that one of the tributes walks in unannounced. But it’s not just others they worry about; their own words are guarded as they keep their opinions close to themselves. After all, once the tributes are assigned, they won’t be helping each other. A loose comment right now could affect their tribute once things grow more serious. Then it comes to choosing who will mentor whom. It’s not as clear-cut as it was the year I was reaped, nor is it nearly as overwhelming as last year when Pitch and I had a pair of twelve-year-old kids. Neither of the mentors have a preference, so they turn to a coin flip.

“Really? This is how you solve things?” I ask skeptically, eyebrows raised. “Professional.”

“No, sometimes we use rock-paper-scissors,” Pitch replies, shooting me a flicker of a grin.

I snort.

In the end, the coin determines that Pitch will mentor the boy and Elm will mentor the girl.

We don’t wait too long before the escort, Daphne, brings in the two new tributes. My heartrate quickens when the tributes step into the lounge. Their eyes, glistening with tears, take in the extravagance of the car. Nothing quite as opulent as this exists in District 7. We have some fancy places, but the tribute trains are the pinnacle of excess. In an attempt to win the tributes over, the Capitol sabotages their senses with a wealth of material goods, foods, and luxury.

The girl steps away and begins to walk the length of the car. She takes in everything around her and allows her hands to run over the smooth faux-granite countertop that holds platters of delicacies. She doesn’t linger on the food itself, only on the slab of stone that supports it.

“I want Pitch,” she says, not quite turning back to us.

“You’re assigned to Elm,” Pitch replies carefully. He watches her. Studies her. Tries to understand her.

And I admit my confusion, too. I wouldn’t dream of walking into the train and telling the mentors which one would be working with me.

She looks at us over her shoulder. “I just figured I’d have a better chance of victory if I could sleep my way to success,” she says simply. Her eyes land on me.

Oh hell no. A bolt of hot anger bursts through me. I start to stand up, but Elm grabs my arm and keeps me down. The coolness of his hand on my wrist keeps me from fighting against his grasp, but I jerk my arm away regardless. How _dare_ this tribute talk about me like that?! I fought to win using my own abilities, not because I slept with Pitch or anyone else.

Pitch clears his throat. “We’re going to pretend that comment didn’t happen for the sake of civility,” he says. “You’re assigned to Elm.”

I fume quietly in my seat if only because I know that this train hasn’t started moving yet and I don’t want to be tossed off it before we get to the Capitol. I dare to glance towards Pitch and see that he has his jaw set and is staring at the girl. Elm watches the interaction intently, though his hand remains poised to grab me again should he need to. The boy tribute, however, stares slack-jawed between his district partner and Pitch, completely aghast at the interaction.

“Fine,” the girl says easily. But the undertone of her word suggests that this matter isn’t fully closed.

She turns back to surveying the room as though the rest of us don’t exist. I try to read her from her body language, her posture, her expression—anything. But I get nothing. All I know is her physical appearance: medium height, athletic build, sun-tanned skin, curly blondish-brown hair. She keeps her expression closed so that we can’t read her thoughts. Whatever her problem is, she won’t let us see it.

The boy, still somewhat frozen in place, lurches forward when the train starts moving. He tries to cover it up like he really meant to take a few staggering steps, and he heads to an empty seat in the lounge.

“What do we do?” he asks Pitch, shooting a quick glance to Elm, then to me. “How do I win? Or, I mean, how do I have the best shot at winning?”

The girl comes over at this and takes the remaining empty seat. She perches there carefully and listens in on the conversation.

“Well, it can’t really be summed up quite so concisely,” Pitch begins.

Suddenly Daphne claps her hands. The sound startles me. I look up at the woman still standing in the doorway where she must’ve watched that _pleasant_ little interaction. For the first time, I take a good look at her. She’s about 5’6” or 5’7” with a muscular frame, pale skin, and sharp, blue eyes. She could be one of the Career victors who continues to train after winning except the silver suit makes her look like a baked potato and I’ve yet to see a victor willingly wear something like that. She might be somewhere between thirty to forty years old, but as always, the Capitol’s age-minimizing technology makes it difficult to discern.

“There will be some rules in the District 7 train, so I’d like to go over those,” she says. Pitch and I exchange looks but we both remain silent. “We are on a very tight schedule, and we don’t want any of our tributes to be exhausted. We will have a light lunch right now, and dinner will be at 6:00 PM. Everyone must be in their rooms by 9:00 PM. We will wake up at 7:00 AM for breakfast. Is that clear?”

Yeah, definitely clear. We traded one psychotic escort for another.

The avox brings our lunches right into the lounge car per Daphne’s instructions so that we can watch the reaping recaps while we eat. Morbid, but there are worse parts of the Hunger Games to watch while eating. I settle onto the couch next to Pitch so that Daphne can have my seat. Neither of us comment about Daphne’s new rule change, but I know both of us cannot fathom that it can lead to anything positive. Instead we sit there with our plates of finger food and watch as the escort turns to the District 1 reaping.

I hate this part. I hate watching all the other tributes around the country walk up to the stage to face their death. It sickens me to know that not only did these kids get chosen for death but that it’s been turned into a pageant. What’s worse is that because we always view it in order of district number (and that’s how it’s always shown at home in the mandatory viewing the night of the reaping), the very first tributes we see are volunteers from the Capitol’s lapdog district.

This year, like every other year, the volunteers from District 1 take the stage proudly. They wave to the crowd and blow kisses and absorb the attention bestowed upon them like this is their damned destiny. I clench my fists as the cameras hone in on their smiling faces. I might get along with Isolde, but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever get over the fact that these tributes are volunteering to murder kids.

Pitch takes my fist and carefully unclenches my fingers. He slips his hand into mine and holds firmly. Some might see it as a romantic move, but it’s nothing more than him trying to keep me from flipping out in front of the television. I take the hint and try to level myself out as the camera turns away from the beautiful blonde-haired girl with the electric smile and her equally charming dark-haired counterpart. The focus shifts to District 2, which is equally disturbing, but at least the tributes don’t soak up the attention in quite the same way. They pump their fists and shout out to their family and friends instead.

District 3 is always depressing. Their chances of success are slim to none, and they’re wedged in between the Career districts. The television shows two pairs of bloodthirsty Careers, a pair of wiry, shaking fifteen year olds, and then another pair of trained murderers. Though when I see the District 4 pair, I can’t help but think of the final battle last year and how captivating it was to watch. . . . And then I grow disgusted with myself for even letting this idea cross into my mind.

The reapings continue on. Our pair from District 7 doesn’t stand out in any way above the rest of the tributes. They don’t show anything particularly promising, but they also don’t look completely hopeless. The girl, Wisteria, almost appears calm as she walks tight-lipped to the stage. But from my angle, it was obvious how terrified she was as she tried to hold herself together. After the boy’s name, Sage, is called, the camera hones in on the screaming person: a girl, also in the reaping area, probably a year or two older.

Wisteria snorts.

I narrow my eyes at her, but she keeps focusing on the television. Pitch’s hand tightens on mine. Alright, alright. I try to sit back into the couch and ignore the girl.

Out of the corner of my eye, Sage sinks deeper into his seat.

We need to wait until the last handful of reapings air since the various reapings are staggered over the course of the late morning and early afternoon. But despite the fact that this train car holds so many people, not a single one of us can break the tension that binds us all together. An avox comes in and offers us drinks, but nobody takes her up on it, and she leaves just as quickly as she came in.

“This is a talkative bunch,” Daphne says after several minutes pass. “Maybe Wisteria and Sage would like to tell us about themselves?”

 _At least it’s something_ , I think. I straighten up in my seat and slip my hand out of Pitch’s.

The escort looks between the two tributes. Sage avoids eye contact. Wisteria rolls her eyes.

When it’s clear that everybody waits for them to make the first move, the girl says, “No, I don’t want to tell you anything about myself.” She turns to Elm. “When do we start mentoring? Can we get out of here now?”

Elm raises his eyebrows at her. I wonder if he’s ever had to deal with an abrasive tribute like this. Thank heavens that I’m not mentoring this year; I never would have been able to deal with her. I know that Pitch probably would have stepped in and made sure that I had the easier tribute to handle, but I also know that I wouldn’t have let him. Not now. It’s not my first year as victor anymore. Elm clears his throat.

“We need to finish watching the reaping first,” he replies quietly.

“I can watch it on my own,” she says. “We’re wasting time.”

“We are not wasting time,” he mentor tells her. He keeps his voice steady and calm.

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one about to die,” the girl spits.

Elm doesn’t respond to this. The girl scoffs and rolls her eyes again.

“Fine. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like you’ve brought any tributes to victory,” she says to Elm.

“If you don’t shut up, _I’ll_ be your mentor,” I snap at her.

Wisteria turns on me and glares, but it does the trick and she says nothing more. Whatever tension in the room existed before has been amplified in the silence the follows. Except, I realize, in Pitch. He is weirdly relaxed when the rest of us don’t even know how to handle the uneasiness between us.

Daphne picks up the remote control and flips the television station until another bustling district square comes onto the screen. District 10. We train our attention on it because whatever drama will get displayed on the screen offers a distraction to the drama unfolding in the District 7 lounge car. We need to wait only a few minutes until they show the reaping, a condensed form that gets rid of most of the speeches. The people in the Capitol don’t care about all that extra garbage; they only want to see what their betting options look like.

The girl who is reaped only has one arm. The boy is a scrawny little thing. I draw in a breath. The Capitol can claim that these are hearty representatives of District 10, but it’s bullshit. These kids won’t last the bloodbath.

District 11 follows afterwards where the tributes look fairly mediocre. District 12 ends the program, but the tributes surprise me: both are seventeen or eighteen and muscular. It looks like Terra might have something to work with this year.

“Alright, you wanted private mentoring? Let’s go talk about the tributes,” Elm says as he stands up and motions towards the door at the far end of the car.

The girl looks at him for a second before standing and walking towards the door without a second glance back. Elm stays long enough to shoot Pitch a look, and then he heads after his tribute.

This leaves Pitch, Sage, Daphne, and myself. Sage looks between the three of us nervously, and Daphne excuses herself to take care of behind-the-scenes escort business. Once she is gone and the door closed, Pitch sits up a little straighter.

“Alright, Sage. I’m sure you know this already, but I’m Pitch. This is Juniper,” he says to the tribute. “I’m mentoring you, but Juniper will be in and out, okay?”

Sage nods. His eyes flit in my direction briefly before he turns his attention back to Pitch.


	4. Chapter 4

“She’s scared, Juniper,” Pitch says to me as I rifle through my satchel for a book to read.

I shoot him a look. “Yeah, well, we all were. But we weren’t assholes about it,” I tell him. I dump the contents of the bag onto Pitch’s dresser and try to catch the books before they fall to the floor. One of them tumbles to the thick carpet, and Pitch leans over and picks it up.

“Don’t be hard on her,” he tells me as he holds the book out.

I take it from him and turn the novel over in my hands. Now that I’m here, none of the books I brought sound great. But I decide that this one will be as good as any.

“She’s taking some pretty cheap shots,” I mutter.

Pitch cups my chin in his hand and looks me in the eye.

“Promise me that you’re not going to let her get to you,” he says.

“Fine, I promise,” I grumble. “But only because she’s going to be dead soon.”

He lets out a breath. “Juniper. . . .”

“What?” I ask. But my eyes shift away from his, and I stare at his shoulder to avoid looking at him.

“Our tributes put their faith in us. We need to be there for them, even if they piss us off,” he says to me. I know where he’s going with this. It’s a version of the same speech he gave me last year when we had hopeless tributes. But my tribute, Rosa, wasn’t hopeless. She could have won. And yet she didn’t. She made it so far only to be impaled on a sword. And if that’s the fate of a twelve-year-old girl whose cunning and skill had let her slip into the final four with ease, then how the hell was I supposed to believe in a girl like Wisteria who was reduced to snide comments as her defense?

And yet, despite how much the female tribute irritates me, I want her to win. I want them both to win. It’s a stupid, foolish hope that one or the other can make it out, but it’s a hope I can’t pull out of me and cast aside like I wish I could.

“She’s not even your tribute,” I tell him.

“She’s not, but she is a human,” he says.

I don’t have words to reply to this. Pitch moves his hand away, but he doesn’t stop studying me as he tries to assess my reaction and pick apart what’s going through my head. Good luck because I don’t even know what’s in my brain right now myself.

“Are you going to sleep in here tonight?” he asks as he surveys my small collection of books.

“I guess it depends on where this escort stands on interfering in other people’s personal lives,” I answer.

A smile tugs at the corner of Pitch’s mouth. “Until we hear otherwise, I assume she doesn’t care,” he says.

“Alright, well, I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I say.

I leave Pitch with my books and head out of the room. The door whooshes shut behind me. The lights in the hall have already been dimmed for the evening, and I pause to let my eyes adjust. Already I look forward to the comfort of Pitch’s embrace, which is probably stupid, but I don’t care. It’s been weeks since I’ve last spent time with him outside of the Saturday night meal my parents arrange.

Suddenly I realize I’m not alone. I stand with my back to the door and see the figure of the escort standing down the hallway watching me. I stare back at her in surprise for a few seconds as I wait for her to say something, but she remains silent as she watches me. When I realize that she has no intention of either saying or doing anything, I shoot her a glare and head on my way to my own car with my own room. Her eerie presence unnerves me, but I force myself to forget about it as I close my door and head to the shower.

Fifteen minutes later, I return to Pitch’s car.

Pitch is in the bathroom brushing his teeth and I take a minute to double check to make sure that there are no other books in my little pile that seem interesting. But the one I had decided on a few minutes prior appears to be the best one right now, so I head towards the bed. The water turns off, and a moment later, he ambles back into the bedroom.

“What are your thoughts on the escort?” I ask him as my book and I make ourselves comfortable in the king-sized bed.

Pitch sits down on the edge of the bed.

“She gets points for not being Lala, but other than that, I can’t really say,” he says as he moves into bed next to me.

“She was lurking in the hallway when I went to go take a shower,” I tell him. “Just staring at me as I left your room. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. Really creepy.”

He pulls the blankets around us, then pauses to think about it for a moment. I watch him briefly around the pages of my book before lowering the novel to see him better.

“Escorts come and go,” he says at last. “They’ll be here for a few years, you get used to them, and then they leave to ‘better’ districts. If they’re good enough to work with District 7, then they’re probably good enough to be promoted.”

“Unlike some of the lower districts where they stay for many years,” I comment. “It’s sick that we’re nothing but pawns to them.”

Pitch looks at me, his grey eyes dark. Warning me. I close my mouth and say nothing else despite the anger that surges through me.

Nothing about this is humane. Nothing about this makes any sense. It’s funny because when you’re not a tribute or a victor but you’re just a regular district resident with no real affiliation to the Hunger Games, you know that this annual event is cruel and sadistic, but you don’t think about it too much unless the Games are in session. Otherwise you can go about your life as usual with only the occasional worry that yourself or someone you love may be reaped. For the rest of us, however, this is a reality we live with, and for as helpless as you feel watching it at home, it’s even more agonizing when you know that you’re a part of it and that you’re supposed to be doing something to get the kid you’ve been assigned to home alive.

I swallow hard and lift the book back up. But as my eyes scan the page, the words blend together. Several times I try to get through one short paragraph, only to find myself at the beginning once more. I grit my teeth and start again.

Pitch lowers the book. I glare at him.

“Why did you come to the Capitol this time?” he asks me.

“To keep you company,” I tell him.

He studies me, searching my face for the truth. But it is the truth, at least mostly. He’s come to the Capitol year after year alone, and it almost drove him to madness. Last year, we were both miserable, but at least we were miserable together, and that brought enough comfort to us both that we could get through it.

“When we get to the train station, you can take a train back to District 7,” he says to me. “Nobody will think twice. They’ll just think that you were accompanying me, that’s all.”

“Really, Pitch?” I snap. My heart thumps, but each beat pumps more irritation through me. “Why do you want to get rid of me?”

“I don’t want to get rid of you,” he says sharply. “I just don’t want you being subjected to these people. You were barely eighteen and they were all over you last year.”

“I’ll deal with it,” I say. “I’ll just stay in my room and read the entire time, I don’t know. Don’t worry about me.”

He’s protecting me, but he’s also making me feel childish. I know that I need protection, but so do all the victors. We’re not going to get it. Pitch certainly has never gotten it. We’ll never have any way to get out of whatever the Capitol has planned for us, no matter how old we are.

Pitch pulls me into his arms, and I curl up into him, my book forgotten. He reaches over and turns off the light. Whatever anger I had moments ago vanishes, and I bury myself into his body.

“So now that you’ve seen the tributes, is this year going to be one of the hard years or one of the easier years?” I ask him. I want him to say that it’s going to be easy and that one of the tributes will be a shoe-in for victory, but I know he won’t. Pitch might try to protect me, but he doesn’t do it by lying to keep me sheltered from the truth.

He thinks about it for a moment. “It’s too early to decide,” he says. “First impressions can be deceiving, and that goes both for our tributes and for the others.”

“Maybe it’ll be easier not to get attached to them this year,” I whisper, but I know I’m telling myself a lie because I think of the large eyes of the male tribute and the cries from the girl when his name was drawn. I think of how awkward he is but how he struggles to find his footing in this new and brief world he lives in so that he may have his chance to survive.

Pitch strokes my hair, his fingers moving through the still-wet strands as he brushes them away from my cheek. There is no secret to not getting attached to your tributes. There’s no way that you’re going to be able to simply let them go when they die. Regardless of how much you like them, they’re still _yours_ and you can’t do a damned thing to help them. Not when the blood spurts forth from their bodies and they crumple to the ground with the blast of the cannon overhead. Pitch knows this. He’s done this for seventeen years now.

“It never gets easier,” he answers calmly. I focus on the way his fingers brush against me as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” I manage. “I was just hoping. . . .”

“Yeah, that’s what this is all about. A little bit of hope to keep us going long enough to see us through to the next Hunger Games,” he answers distantly. For a moment, nothing exists but the sound of our own breathing, and I listen to the way his remains calm and steady. Then he says, “I’d like your company in the Capitol, Juniper. But not at the expense of your sanity.”

“I think I lost that awhile ago,” I mutter.

He exhales sharply at that, but says nothing more. I close my eyes and within minutes fall asleep to the sound of his evenly-beating heart.

Somebody raps sharply on the bedroom door, and for a few seconds, I lie there in warmth and confusion as I try to place where I am. Pitch manages to get up first, so he asks groggily, “Who is it?”

“It’s Daphne. It’s seven-fifteen. You were supposed to be awake fifteen minutes ago,” she calls out.

“Alright, sorry. We’re awake and we will get ready,” he says.

“Breakfast is in fifteen minutes,” Daphne answers.

“I guess we needed some micromanaging this morning,” I say to Pitch.

He smiles and says, “Go. I’ll meet you in the dining car.”

I run my hand through my hair so I don’t look completely wrecked and force myself out of the bed. Probably it would have been wiser to bring my morning’s clothing into Pitch’s car with me but that’s not an option now. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stagger half-asleep towards the door.

“Don’t forget your book,” Pitch says, and I turn around just in time to see a book flying towards me. It knocks into my shoulder and thumps to the ground which makes him laugh. I just glare at him, pick it up, and head into the hallway.

I pull on fresh clothes, wash my face, brush my teeth, and add the briefest hints of makeup with just enough time to slip into the dining car before the fifteen minutes is up. Pitch still isn’t here, but nobody seems to notice as the avoxes are already bringing the final dishes to the breakfast table. They pour juice into our crystal goblets and set pitchers of coffee and hot chocolate on the table.

I pause to let an avox move by, and Daphne must take it as confusion over where I’ll be sitting because she directs me to a chair at the end of the table next to where I assume Pitch will be seated. She has it arranged so that she sits at the head of the table, with the tributes on one side and the mentors opposite their tributes.

At this point, the micromanaging bothers me, but I remind myself that our last escort, Lala, was more for show than to actually do her job. Perhaps this is how escort duties are normally performed. I’ll ask Pitch later, I decide, and I turn to the pitchers of hot beverages. I haven’t gotten desperate enough to reach for the coffee (that’s a last-minute resort for when sleep ceases to exist), so I pour steaming hot chocolate into my mug.

Pitch arrives a minute later freshly showered. He slips into the empty seat between Elm and me and across from the male tribute.

“Now that we are all here, let’s go over today’s schedule,” Daphne says to us. She pulls out a tablet and glances down at the screen as she continues. “Our train will arrive in the station at 9:10 AM. We will disembark at 9:25 AM and the tributes will be taken directly to the Remake Center for today’s work. All mentors and tributes must be present on the ground floor of Remake Center at exactly 5:30 PM for the opening ceremonies. Following the chariot ride, we will have dinner in the District 7 apartment of the Training center at 8:00 PM.”

Pitch helps himself to breakfast as she speaks, and he sets toast and a little cup of jam onto my empty plate without even asking if I’m hungry. (I’m not.)

“What’s the Remake Center?” Sage asks.

“It’s where you’ll go to look presentable for tonight’s event,” replies the escort, as though that really tells him anything.

“They will give you a makeover to raise you to Capitol standards,” I tell him. Sage suppresses a grimace at my description. Little does he know just how useless and humiliating it is, but he’ll find out in a few hours’ time.

Daphne ignores my remark as she continues, “You have between now and when the train pulls into the station to discuss any mentoring or training. Any questions?”

Nobody replies, so she just nods and puts her tablet away.

“What am I supposed to be eating?” Wisteria asks of Elm. “I don’t even know what half of this stuff is.”

I can’t see Elm’s expression from here, but whatever his initial reaction is, he manages to say politely, “I have no recommendations at this time. I suggest you eat whatever you’re comfortable with as long as you eat something.”

Not wanting to make a bad example, I scoop a slab of jam out of the cup on my plate and spread it evenly across the toast. It distracts me momentarily from what happens next. All I hear is Wisteria saying, “I don’t think our strategies are really aligning here.”

“What do you want me to do about that?” Elm asks.

“I don’t know,” the girl groans. “At least _try_ to help me?”

“Eat breakfast, then we’ll talk,” her mentor replies.

Wisteria stares at him for another second, and then she reaches over and ladles a spoonful of scrambled eggs onto her plate.


	5. Chapter 5

Pitch and I head to the Training Center after the tributes have been sent off on their way. As the large building looms up in front of our cab, my heart thumps loudly. Like the reaping, I wonder how many years will pass before I’ll no longer feel the terror. Telling myself that I am safe does nothing. Not when I know that even though I am safe, the tributes are far from it. It is still a place of death, filled with the ghosts of nearly a hundred and fifty years of slaughter.

We leave the cab and head into the building. From there, we take an elevator off a side corridor to reach the hall with the mentoring room. But as I step into the room, I’m not prepared for the sudden surge of memories that assault me, and I come to a complete stop. Pitch nudges me, and it’s only to keep from falling on my face that I take a few hesitant steps forward. This is where I last saw Rosa alive. Right there, sitting at that console with the large “# 7” above it, I watched her get stabbed through with the District 4 girl’s sword.

“Hey, Pitch, Juniper!” Isolde bounds over to us. “Fancy seeing you guys here mentoring again.”

“I am. Juniper’s not,” Pitch explains.

Isolde grins and raises an eyebrow at me. “Oh-ho, really?” she says.

I finally manage to get my bearings and drag myself into the conversation.

“Are you mentoring?” I ask her.

“Yep,” she says. “I have the female tribute again.”

“Aren’t there thirty-five of you?” I ask. “Why do you have to do it again?”

She shrugs. “There’s like twenty of you guys, and yet Pitch is mentoring back-to-back years. Just the luck of the draw,” she says.

“Who else is mentoring this year?” Pitch asks her.

“I don’t know everybody, but Cronus and me for District 1, Ferrer and Freya for District 2, nobody cares about District 3, um, Tethys and Hero for District 4, Elijah and James for District 5, also nobody cares about District 6, you know about District 7 I hope, Esther and Calico (as usual) for District 8, Bran and Jenna (also as usual) for District 9, and I haven’t heard anything about Districts 10 through 12, but I assume it’s the usual people.”

Isolde beams proudly back at us like we should complement her abilities to recite the mentor roster. I snort out a laugh.

“Thanks, Isolde, I feel the love,” Rikuto of District 6 mutters in passing as he heads over towards his station.

“You know it,” Isolde replies. She turns back to us. “So what—or should I say _who_ —brings you back to the Capitol, Juniper?” she asks as she eyes Pitch.

“Thanks,” I say flatly.

“Okay, I won’t give you guys too hard of a time,” she says. “Once Hammer gets here, you guys want to go out to lunch? It’ll be like a double date, except I’m not dating Hammer.”

“Is that what you consider not giving us too hard of a time?” Pitch asks her. She grins at him, her dimples becoming more pronounced.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Career districts have new people this year—new compared to who I know, that is—while the lower districts are “the same as usual.” The stark contrast makes me sad. Especially for Esther. She’s seventeen now, and she’s been mentoring every year since she won at thirteen. Whatever older victors for District 8 still live, none of them have stepped in to relieve her.

I wander away from Isolde and Pitch and head over towards my old computer station. Of course I won’t be using it this year, but I still find myself sitting down in the seat.

“You alright?” Pitch asks as he sits down next to me.

“Yeah, just enjoying some fond memories,” I say. I gesture towards the monitor. “Looks like they replaced the screen after I broke it.”

“Fortunately we won’t have a repeat of that this year,” Pitch says. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to some people you didn’t get a chance to meet last year.”

“More Careers?” I ask.

“Is that a problem?”

I stand up. Might as well meet them. I’ll have to work with them in the future at some point, though I doubt it will ever be to secure an alliance between our tributes.

Pitch leads me to the other side of the room where the computer stations for Districts 1 through 6 are lined against the wall. We walk up to a man and woman who are standing near each other in light conversation. The man is in his early- to mid-forties and the woman is probably a few years younger than him. They both turn and look at us as we approach.

“Ferrer, Freya, this is Juniper,” Pitch says to them.

District 2. I don’t remember what Hunger Games they won, but they’ve been shown on television often enough over the years that even if I didn’t know their names, I’d be able to recognize them. The woman is about 5’3” but slender. Her straight black hair is drawn into a high ponytail. The man must be near 6’ and has a more muscular build, but not the sort that makes you wonder if he only lifts weights all day long. I wouldn’t necessarily pin them as “Careers” at this point were it not for the sharpness in their expressions. The man’s golden brown eyes assess me on the spot, and the woman watches me more cautiously as though she’s trying to figure out if I’m a threat.

The man nods. “You’re mentoring this year?” he asks.

“No, I’m just visiting,” I say stupidly.

He smiles at me. “I forget that District 7 has enough backup that you don’t have to mentor every year,” he says.

“Ah, yes, the non-Career Career district,” the woman comments.

“We’re not Careers,” I tell her.

She grins at me. “Sure,” she says.

Right, of course. Because I “volunteered.” So now I’m a Career.

“I’m just introducing Juniper to people who weren’t here last year,” Pitch cuts in before the conversation can go downhill fast.

Then he introduces me to Gamma and Zinc of District 3 and Tethys and Hero of District 4. We don’t get farther than that before the room swells with mentors buzzing back and forth, and it becomes an inconvenience to try to do any sort of introductions. Everyone else knows everyone, with the exception of maybe Rikuto or Esther who, like me, might not have had a chance to meet some of the mentors from districts with room to swap out. I don’t even get a chance to say hi to Esther before Pitch heads me out the door again.

“You’ll have time later,” he says to my protests. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

“We’re going to get some attention again this year,” he says to me once we are on the city streets where it’s harder to be overheard by anyone trying to listen in. We walk briskly, and it only takes a few seconds for me to realize that moving any slower would mean that we might get ambushed by onlookers. People gawk at us in passing, and I hold my head up and look nowhere but directly in front of me.

“Ugh. I’m not even mentoring. What do they want with me?” I ask. Somewhere in my brain, I had the wild thought that maybe they’d leave us alone this time because our “relationship” was no longer a hot topic. But judging by the eager eyes and wide smiles, it doesn’t look like that’s the case.

“I think it’s because you’re _not_ mentoring,” Pitch tells me. “Most districts don’t have too many victors to spare when they’re not mentoring, but even those who do try to stay away if it’s not their year to be here.”

“You’re not sending me back,” I say before he can suggest it.

“I’m not going to try. You’re already here,” he says. “And, anyway, I am appreciative of your company. So where do you want to eat?”

“I have no idea; I don’t know any place here,” I tell him. “You choose something.”

Because Pitch is Pitch and therefore has problems understanding that Capitol-nature is not the same thing as actual-nature, we end up ordering food from a truck and taking it on a nature trail not too far from the Training Center.

“I know it’s not the real thing,” he tells me as we sit down on a bench. “But it’s the best we’re going to get here, so might as well enjoy it.”

I pop open the lid of the container that holds my food. “So why did you drag me away from everyone else to come out to this almost-remote corner of the city?” I ask him casually before I reach into the bag and pull out two forks. I hand him one.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says.

“Yeah, and?”

“It’s about Elm,” he says as he digs into his food. “Hence why I didn’t want to say anything at the Training Center.”

“But it’s okay here where others might overhear?” I sink my fork into the pile of macaroni. We might be physically alone, but I don’t doubt that there are cameras and microphones everywhere in a pleasant little place like this.

“The only people who can hear us right now are the ones who already know what’s going on,” Pitch tells me. “Did Elm ever tell you why he didn’t mentor last year?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Other than the fact that he was sick.”

“I suppose since there’s no nice way to phrase it: Elm is an alcoholic,” Pitch says.

“I thought most of the victors are,” I admit.

“It would probably be fair to say that many victors take to drinking when things get rough, but Elm was in the hospital to detox during the last Hunger Games,” he tells me between bites of food. “He hid it pretty well. I never knew that it was a problem, and I didn’t realize that was the reason he was in the hospital until he told me afterwards.”

“And now you’re telling me? Why?” I ask.

“Because he’s going to mentor this year,” he says. “And, well, I’m not making you responsible for him by any stretch of the imagination, but if it ever looks like he’s going to pick up his old habit, let me know.”

I’ve known Elm for two years, and never once did I suspect that he had a problem. Sure, sometimes I saw him drinking, but that’s not unusual; I’ve seen all the victors in District 7 drinking at some point. He always came across as pretty decent and level-headed whenever I spoke with him. Then again, even Pitch was unaware of the situation, and he’s known Elm since he mentored him in the 130th Hunger Games. This makes me wonder how many other victors in our neighborhood are hiding addictions. And, of course, most of them won’t get help with this or with any other issue brought on by the stress of being a victor. Not until they are like Pitch or Elm and it is a last-ditch effort to get them straightened out before they kill themselves.

“Any other secrets I should know?” I prod.

“Probably, but not from me,” he says. I think he’s joking, but when I glance at him, there’s no smile on his face. Instead he stares intently at his plate of food and spears a chunk of chicken on the end of his fork. He must see me staring at him out of the corner of his eye, because he sighs and looks at me. “Yes, everyone has their own shit. You will, too, unfortunately. You mentor long enough, and it starts to destroy you.”

“Do you think that’s why they make us do it?” I ask him. “Like being in the Hunger Games wasn’t bad enough, so they decide to make us relive it?”

“I’m not certain,” he says carefully. “I suppose it makes things more interesting, too. . . . You haven’t eaten anything.”

I look down at the food in my lap. The fork still juts from the middle of the pasta where I had planted it. No, I’m not hungry. I’m never hungry when I come to the Capitol.

“You need to eat,” Pitch instructs. “I don’t care if you have no appetite, but you can’t stop eating.”

The food _looks_ good. It certainly smells good. But that’s not enough to stir my stomach into wanting to put food inside of it. I flick at the fork with my fingers before looking up at Pitch.

“I probably should have gotten something lighter,” I admit. “Can I have some of yours?”

He looks at me with irritation, but tilts his box over mine and scoops chicken and rice onto my plate. Then he helps himself to some macaroni.

“Why did you order this anyhow?” he asks.

“I panicked,” I say. “I had to order and didn’t know what to get. You can have more if you want some.”

“Just eat,” he orders me. I do as instructed. His food is much easier to get down than the thick macaroni, but I barely taste it.

We eat in silence. When it’s clear I’ve eaten as much as I can, I hand my box to Pitch for him to finish. The good thing about the Capitol (not that it justifies why we’re here or what they do to us) is that you’re never wanting for food. Back home, if I miss a meal, the food goes in the fridge for later. There’s no lack of food, but there’s also not nearly as much variety or room for waste.

With our meals finished, we throw the trash in the bin and wander around the trail until Pitch says it’s time to return to the Training Center. So we make our way to the main street and slowly head back.


	6. Chapter 6

“They put your garden in,” Esther says to me as we wander the halls of the Training Center. “Can we stop and see it?”

I suppress a shiver. That garden wasn’t free, and now that it’s complete, I have an obligation that I don’t want to think about. But I _did_ ask for a garden to give us victors a place to go while mentoring, so at least there’s something that everyone can enjoy. I hope. Although I was specific that I didn’t want to be surrounded by screens all the time, that might have been something lost in translation. Or intentionally ignored.

To my surprise, however, the garden is gorgeous. It’s on one of the middle floors in the same wing as the mentoring room. They carved out several stories so that there is a large, spacious ceiling, but the weird thing is that when you step into the garden, you don’t feel like you’re inside at all.

I take a deep breath. My arena was a garden; I can’t get over that. Yes, I asked for a garden, but that didn’t mean that I was prepared to step inside another one. Although this one looks vastly different from the one I spent so many bloody days in, I can’t shake the uneasiness.

Esther slips her hand in mine as we head down one of the paths.

This garden has everything from trees to bushes to flowers, all expertly interwoven to create a forest splashed with color. Winding paths twist and curve. Benches and little alcoves in the foliage offer a place to relax. Statues, fountains, and ponds add a touch of personality. It’s peaceful. It would be more peaceful were it not for the fact that I know that there are a half million cameras everywhere in here watching us carefully. It might bring respite to the horrors of mentoring, but it would be foolish to think it were any more private than the mentoring room.

“They did a great job with it,” Esther comments. She releases my hand to walk over to a small brook that bubbles through the grass. Smooth grey stones line either side. It’s pretty, but it’s clearly artificial. Not that I’m complaining.

“I’m not sure how eager I’ll be to come here alone, but I agree,” I tell her. The sound of a bird nearby causes me to jump, and I whip around to search through the foliage. Finally I see a small flutter of blue up towards the top of the trees.

Esther comes over to stand by my side. “Wow, they have birds? What a great touch,” she comments.

_As long as there are no peacocks. . . ._

“I think I’ve seen enough for now,” I tell her, forcing myself to remain casual but starting to walk in the direction of the exit. “I’ll have to check out the rest later.”

“Hmm, okay,” she says as she trots a few paces to catch up with me.

Transitioning from the garden to the corridors of the Training Center is jarring, and it takes me a second to accept that I was inside of a building the whole time despite knowing that the garden was artificial.

“I know that we don’t have too much time before we have to get ready for tonight, but I was going to go to a small café near here, if you’d like to join me,” Esther says.

I raise an eyebrow. “Cutting things a little close, are you?” I ask. I forgot a watch, but I’m sure that we’re within a couple hours of needing to be at the Remake Center to get the tributes organized.

She smiles, but it seems to convey something other than happiness. I can’t really pinpoint it.

“Is that going to bother you?” she asks as we step onto the elevator.

“Well, I’m not mentoring. You are,” I tell her.

“I’m okay,” she replies. She adjusts her backpack on her shoulders and shifts the weight around. “It’s in between here and there, so it’s more like we’re just taking a very slow walk.”

As we head to the café, we talk briefly about the things that have gone on in the few months since I visited her in District 8. Mostly it’s just me talking and Esther listening politely, which kind of irks me a bit, but we approach the café before I have too much time to dwell on it.

It’s a small shop, with a dozen tables and about half a dozen patrons scattered about. When we walk in, we immediately draw the patrons’ attention away from their conversations or books or whatever. They try to pretend that they aren’t staring, but they do a shitty job of it, so I just force myself to ignore them and walk with Esther to the counter. We order teas and take them back to an empty table with large, puffy chairs.

“So you didn’t tell me a single thing about what you’ve been up to,” I tell her once we’re comfortably seated.

She opens a small packet of sugar and pours it into the tea.

“I’ve been . . . busy,” she says. “I’m jealous that you’re going to university. I can barely get through my high school material.” She sighs.

“Yeah, well, I also went to the Hunger Games when I was seventeen, not thirteen,” I point out. “That makes a huge difference.”

She daintily stirs her tea with a spoon, eyes on the ripples that form as the utensil moves.

“Thanks,” she says. “I appreciate it. But it’s still a little embarrassing.”

“It’s not embarrassing that—” But I stop short. At a table not too far away sits a man maybe a couple years older than me. He is well-polished and carefully dressed. His hawkish eyes watch us with great interest. No, not us. Esther. I bristle when I realize this, and when he notices that I’ve caught him staring, I glare straight at him. He casually looks away as though the fact that I noticed him clearly ogling the District 8 victor doesn’t bother him at all.

“There’s a man over there. Won’t stop staring at you,” I mutter to Esther, my eyes still latched on him.

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” she tells me. “Kind of. I mean, I’ve been a victor for several years and people still stare at me. I guess I just ignore them.”

“No, he’s not staring like he wants your autograph,” I say.

“Juniper,” she says.

“I’ll punch the shit out of him if he doesn’t stop.”

She smiles. “No, you don’t need to,” she says. “You’ll probably get arrested.”

To my relief, the man stands up, picks up his coffee and newspaper, and heads out the door. It’s only when he disappears from my vision that I turn my full attention back to Esther. She watches me carefully.

“What?” I demand.

“Oh. Nothing,” she says. Then she adds with a small laugh, “I forget how upset you get at things.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “How can you _not_ get upset if Mr. McCreepy is staring at you?”

She inhales. “I’m sure he wasn’t staring that badly,” she says.

I roll my eyes. “Do you want me to make a chart of how people stare and you can tell me where you put the ‘acceptable’ line?”

She giggles. “Stop it.”

I inadvertently glance around and notice that some of the other patrons watch at us, but I go back to ignoring them. Esther distracts me by telling me about some construction Calico was having on her house a few weeks back to add an indoor swimming pool, and I do my best to listen to her. But in the back of my mind, I wonder just how long she has before it’s acceptable for people to start bothering her, too.

“What time is it?” I ask.

Esther tells me.

“We should probably get going,” I tell her as I sweep up the paper wrappers from the sugar we dumped into our beverages.

“You go on ahead,” she says.

I pause. “You aren’t coming?”

“I am. I just need a couple minutes, I think,” she says quietly. “Before, you know, it all starts again.”

I study her for a second. Poor Esther.

“I can stay here with you,” I offer.

She shakes her head. “I’m fine. You go on,” she says. “I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

“Alright,” I say carefully before I stand up and gather the trash in my hand. She doesn’t say anything more, so I take it that she isn’t going to change her mind. I bid her goodbye and I head towards the door.


	7. Chapter 7

Tasha and Leander, the District 7 stylists, do another mediocre job on the tribute outfits, and the parade goes just as boringly as it did last year. I’m relieved when we are dismissed to go to the Training Center and meet our tributes. By the time we get into the apartment, Daphne has already given the tributes a tour and has sent them off to shower. Elm heads to his room to freshen up, but before Pitch and I can do the same, the escort stops us.

“So what’s going on here?” she asks, and it takes a second for me to realize that she means between Pitch and me. I have no good answer for that (isn’t that what I’ve been wondering for a year now?).

“She’s with me,” Pitch says. “She will be staying in my room.”

Daphne’s eyes linger on me for a moment as she thinks. But at last, she says, “Alright. We’ll be going over the rules at dinner tonight. You’re subject to the same ones as the mentors.”

“Okay,” I tell her.

“We aren’t quite . . . used to having so many rules,” Pitch says. “A bit new for us District 7 victors.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Daphne says dryly. “Hence why I’m here.”

With that, she dismisses us. Pitch and I head down the hallway towards his bedroom and slip inside.

The Capitol didn’t change the room much, if at all, since last year. The furniture is carved roughly out of wood and provides a natural feel despite the sterility of the walls. The decorations are sparse: a few pine boughs, a couple candles. It’s enough to not feel like a specimen in a laboratory, but not enough to make it feel homey.

As soon as the door closes, I turn around to Pitch.

“What the heck?” I ask. “I’m guessing that that’s not how escorts normally are, then?”

Pitch laughs. “No, this is a new one,” he says. “Lala was pretty lenient, but this is excessive. I’m going to guess that Daphne’s here strictly to keep us from getting too wild.”

“Oh, right,” I say. “I forgot that we told everybody how shitty of mentors we were and whatever.”

Last year, as a means to mollify Lala, we had to tell people that it was our lovely escort who was the most important person in the District 7 apartment, and that we were too horny to be of any use as mentors. The thought of the assault charges she held over my head still unnerves me, even though I know that they have long since been dropped. The important thing is that I avoid her at all costs now; Lala hasn’t simply vanished (or died, as I had hoped) but is now an escort for District 4. A huge promotion, especially given District 4’s recent victory.

“A small price to pay to stay out of jail,” he reminds me. “You want to freshen up first, or you want me to?”

“You know, as stupid as it sounds, I forgot to bring any clothes,” I tell him. “Everything is back in my apartment.”

“But you made sure to bring your books,” Pitch chuckles. He shakes his head and walks towards the wardrobe. “Let’s see if there’s anything that might fit you, at least until you can head back there.”

When he opens the wardrobe door, it’s clear that somebody had anticipated I’d be here because there’s a wide variety of clothing that Pitch definitely wouldn’t wear, if he could even fit into it.

“They either figured you’d be here with me, or they thought that I’d like to have a change of style,” he mutters as he fingers the fabric of a sequined dress. “Anyway, I guess that solves that problem.”

“Tell me there’s something other than dresses,” I mutter as I shove in next to him and begin to rifle through the clothes. To my relief, they provided several pants and shirts that appear comfortable enough to wear inside the apartment, as well as casual outfits to wear during the day. I pull out what I want and then head off to the bathroom to take a quick shower.

So far, I’ve managed to not think too much about what happens in the days to come. Tomorrow the tributes begin their training, but even before they head down to the training floor, Pitch will need to work with the boy, Sage. Which means I need to stay out of the way and not distract them. And I have to be careful that in trying to stay out of _his_ way, I don’t end up getting in anybody else’s way. For a brief moment, I consider taking time to explore the city, but then I remind myself that even if I could get past the bloodlust of the Capitol citizens, it’s still a dangerous place to be.

I turn off the water, grab a towel, and wrap it around myself. I don’t regret coming to the Capitol this year, but I do wonder what I was thinking to willingly walk back into this place. Nobody should have to deal with having to constantly look over her shoulder for dangerous beasts, and certainly not when they’re the same species as you. I must be crazy.

Once I’ve dried off and slipped into the fresh clothes, I head out and tell Pitch that I’ll be in the main room.

“Don’t be late for dinner,” I tell him with mock seriousness.

He rolls his eyes and disappears into the bathroom.

Daphne and Elm are already sitting at the dinner table, but I see neither hide nor hair of the tributes. The escort and mentor have cups of coffee in front of their empty place settings and they chat idly about how the tribute parade went. They acknowledge me briefly as I take a seat at the table, and then go back to their discussion about how the District 1 pair really stole the audience’s attention and it’ll be pretty hard to pull it back in favor of District 7. Neither of them say it, but their undertones suggest that there’s nothing particularly special about the District 7 tributes to warrant them the same sort of attention of District 1, or any Career district, really.

Pitch appears a few minutes later and jumps into the conversation as he makes himself comfortable at the table. He and Elm easily exchange dialogue with the escort, and it’s not until a couple minutes in that I realize they are casually trying to pry information out of her: which tributes are rumored to be the top contenders, what sort of things the Capitol citizens are expecting to see in this Hunger Games, what attributes are most favorable. I probably wouldn’t have noticed what they were doing except I thought it interesting how they maneuvered their questions around each other, each one building off the other. Helping each other without really helping. Mutually beneficial. Daphne knows a fair bit, but it’s clear that there’s also a lot she doesn’t know. Still, they appear to be able to extract enough out of her to satisfy themselves.

“The tributes are late,” Daphne says suddenly. She stands up.

“It takes forever to scrub that much makeup off your face,” Elm says.

Daphne ignores him and heads down the hall. She raps sharply first on one door, then on the other, as she draws the tributes out of their bedrooms. It takes a minute—and a couple raps for each—before the tributes mosey out of their bedrooms and after the escort to the table.

Once everyone is present, the avoxes come out and set the place settings on the table followed by the dishes of food themselves. Multiple large bowls of rice, stews, steamed vegetables, and baskets of breads are placed around the table so that everything is within arms’ reach of where any one person sits.

We begin passing the bowls around when Daphne clears her throat.

“I’d like to take a moment to welcome our tributes to the Training Center as we prepare for the 142nd annual Hunger Games,” she says, and I catch the look of horror Sage gives her and the blank expression on Wisteria’s face. “Tomorrow, you tributes will begin training in state-of-the-art facilities right here in the Training Center, but your mentors will go over that with you in more detail. While we’re gathered together, however, we are all going to follow a few basic rules.”

From here, she goes on to tell us what times we are expected to go to sleep, wake up, eat meals, be at certain places, etc. Most of it is for the tributes, but the mentors (and me) do not escape the plethora of rules. At very least, she doesn’t micromanage our activity during the day; while the tributes are training, we are free to do whatever we please. Once they return to the apartments, however, we are expected to be here with them. I don’t dare ask what the expectations will be the day of the interviews during which time the tributes will be with their stylists and prep teams; mentors do not typically stick around, but who knows if she changed that given what happened last year.

With the ground rules set, we turn back to our food. I pick at rice and stew and manage to eat a whole one vegetable. The tributes eat a little more comfortably; I did, too, when I was in their position. Right now, if my stomach tells me it can’t take any more food, then it’s not going to kill me. But when you’re a tribute, eating is paramount. It’s survival.

“Tomorrow morning, you two will be going down to the training room to try out weapons and learn survival skills,” Elm tells the tributes after we’ve had a few minutes of uninterrupted eating. “Pitch and I will be working with you separately tonight to discuss how we want you to approach that, but in general, it’s a good idea to get a good grasp of the survival stations.”

“What about weapons?” Wisteria asks as she picks at a roll of bread. “We need to be able to use weapons, right?”

Elm nods. “Yes, but we will talk privately about your options,” he tells her. “Unless you two want to be trained together.”

Sage turns and looks at his district partner, but Wisteria only rolls her eyes.

“No, I don’t,” she says. “We can only have one winner after all.”

“That is true,” says Elm. “After dinner, we’ll talk more, okay?”

She nods, and it might be the first time she’s been agreeable with her mentor. Perhaps it’s setting in that this is real and another victor isn’t going to magically appear and whisk her away to fill her with all the secrets of how to win the Hunger Games under any circumstances.

“Which survival stations?” Sage asks. His eyes nervously flit between mentors.

“All of them,” Elm says. “If you don’t know the skill they teach, you should probably learn it. But for more questions on that, I’ll defer to Pitch.”

“We can discuss which stations are best for you,” Pitch says. “Let’s wait til after we eat.”

“Okay,” Sage says.

There’s something about his large, pleading eyes that make me shift uneasily in my chair. He wants so much to be helped and guided and to have a chance to live. He doesn’t have the fight that his district partner has—though that’s not necessarily a bad thing because she might be too hostile to get an alliance—but he appears borderline hopeless.

 _Borderline_ , I tell myself. _Not completely._

That means that there is still hope for him.

And I know that by thinking this, I’ll just destroy myself a little more.

No wonder Pitch didn’t want me coming this year. Even as a non-mentoring victor, I can’t help but get attached to the tributes. _Would it be any different at home?_ I ask myself. I’d still be watching the Hunger Games knowing exactly what happens for mentors behind the scenes. So would my reaction to what’s happening be any different at all?

Dinner ends, and Daphne dismisses us.

“I’m going to read, unless you want me to help,” I tell Pitch as we wander away from the table. “I don’t want to bother you guys.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he says. “I still need to get a feel for him.”

Or not completely overwhelm him. Having two victors staring him down instead of one might be a little too much for this kid.

Elm and Pitch take their kids to their mentoring rooms to discuss plans, and I take my book to the couch in the sitting room and curl up on the cushions. Daphne works quietly in the dining room after the avoxes have cleared the table; from here, I can see her head bowed over her tablet and an earpiece in her ear as she flicks through the screen of her device. But I turn back to my novel and try to ignore her presence.

I bury myself in the book and forget all about reality. Instead I’m immersed in a world I’ve never seen but would love to visit, if only I could plunge into the pages and disappear from Panem. Time passes. Eventually I realize somebody is standing over me, and I look up to find Pitch. He looks pretty damned weary.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to bed before we get in trouble.”

I swing my legs off the couch and stand up. The sudden jerk back to reality throws me off a little, but I manage to follow after my former mentor down the hallway and to his bedroom.

It’s weird actually having a bedroom together. Normally we didn’t have a room dedicated to the both of us; we’d just hang out in one or the other’s room until we passed out in bed, or sometimes we’d sneak away when no one was looking. Back during the last Hunger Games, our apartment was empty and it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was never a public “thing” like it is now.

“It was his older sister in the crowd,” he tells me once the door is closed.

I rifle through the wardrobe to find something to sleep in, and am not surprised that they’ve put nightclothes in here for me. None of it suits my tastes, though: all too lacy and skimpy.

“His sister?” I ask as I start going through Pitch’s shirts. Lots of tributes have had siblings, but few have had siblings who have made a scene like that.

“He said that after his mother died, his sister took care of him because their dad was often out of town for work,” he explains. “I guess that she’s the only family he acknowledges after their dad remarried.”

That’s unfortunate, really. I distract myself with the clothing situation so that I don’t have to think about it. Many tributes have a sob story, I try tell myself. No reason why it should make him a better candidate for victory.

“I’m going to wear your clothes to sleep in,” I say as I grab a t-shirt and boxers.

“You’re wearing my underwear?” he asks as he comes over and stands next to me.

“As shorts,” I say. “Can you leave me alone?”

He rolls his eyes but says nothing. I head to the bathroom to change.

As I lay in bed with my book, my eyes can’t focus on the words. Instead I think about our tributes. “Our.” Neither of them are mine, and yet I can tell I’m getting pulled into this and becoming emotionally invested in these two kids, just like last year. I want to say something to Pitch, but then I remember that I’m the one who is supposed to be supporting him, not the other way around. I can’t start dragging him down, especially before the Hunger Games even begin.


	8. Chapter 8

In the morning, the tributes head to training, Pitch and Elm go to the mentoring room, and I head to the bookstore. Before he leaves, Pitch gives me directions to a bookstore not too far from here and makes me promise to avoid the one we went to last year. He looks like he intends to say something else, but he keeps it to himself whatever it is.

I lose myself in the books. I don’t care that people stare at me as I go from shelf to shelf, browsing the new releases and classics alike. Fantasy, adventure, romance, children’s . . . I don’t care what genre as long as the book is good. And when I’m here surrounded by tens of thousands of books, nothing else in the world exists.

Before I came to the Capitol last year, I assumed that the citizens were vapid, bloodthirsty creatures who had no desire for literature or education in general. Now I know that I was only partially correct; they are vapid and bloodthirsty, but books are an important part of their culture in the same way they are in ours. Sure, not everybody reads, but there’s enough people who want to sit around with a good book that there are a fair number of bookstores around the city. And the crazy thing is that they have authors from all over Panem, not just a bunch of brainwashed people from the Capitol. Even the ones from the Capitol that I’ve read haven’t been too bad, though I did avoid the ones that were obviously trash.

I collect a good pile of books from across the board and set them on a table in the bookstore. I pause to thumb through a book before I decide what section of the store to venture to next.

“You have quite the fondness for reading,” comes a voice behind me.

I freeze.

At some point in my visit, I knew that I’d have to deal with Quintus Laurentinus, but I had hoped that it wouldn’t be quite so soon. It’s only my second day here. . . . But that doesn’t matter, does it?

But I can’t hide from him. I did, after all, make an agreement with him last year. So I take a deep breath, compose myself, and turn around.

“Are you stalking me?” I ask him. “Or do you just hang out at bookstores knowing that at some point I’ll come in.”

He smiles at me. Quintus is a beautiful specimen of a human being. I don’t mean handsome. He’s beautiful, like some ancient god come down to Earth. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not attracted to him by any means, and that was before I even knew what he was like. And I can’t get over the makeup. Black eyeliner, green eyeshadow. Lip gloss shines on his lips—just enough that when the light catches his lips, I can tell that he is wearing it.

“Do you really want an answer to that?” he asks. I stare at him, and he continues, “I am a fan of literature myself.”

“You?” I ask skeptically.

He laughs coldly. “Yes, does that surprise you?”

I shrug. “I’m still getting used to the fact that Capitol citizens read,” I say. “No offense, but I figured you were all too dumb to know how to pick up a book. Obviously not.”

“Hmm, yes, we know some things besides how to kill children, which I’m sure is a surprise to anyone from the districts,” Quintus says. His eyes travel across my face, taking in my expression, before meeting my stare. “Why don’t you and I have a talk? Come.”

He leads me away from the safety of my pile of books and towards a quiet corner of the store where tall bookshelves give us some undesired privacy. Three chairs and a small table offer a place for reading should one want to get away from the rest of the patrons and try the newest novel before purchasing it. Quintus motions me towards a seat and then takes the one next to me.

My heart beats loudly and I hope that I don’t come across even half as nervous as how I feel. There is no escape right now; there is no excuse to leave. I am Quintus’ captive audience.

“Did you have a chance to see your new garden?” he asks, his eyes eagerly searching my face.

“Yes,” I say. And because I know that even though this man makes me want to throw up, I still have to treat him with respect, “It’s beautiful. Impressive, really. Thank you.”

He smiles. I answered correctly.

“It’s one of a kind,” he replies. “A team of highly qualified horticulturists, botanists, and architects designed and created the garden.”

“Cool,” I say. He’s waiting for something. My answer, dumb as it was, doesn’t matter. I don’t know what he’s trying to get at, so I sit there awkwardly.

He sits back in his chair and watches me.

“Juniper, we had an agreement last time we met,” he says. “And I really hope you’ll keep your part.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “What do I need to do?”

A grin cracks across his face. “I would like nothing but to spend some time with you,” he says. But it’s in the way his words are spoken that I know ‘nothing’ is far from what he wants.

Still, I try to hold myself together so that I’ll at least come across as somewhat collected and calm. All I want now is Pitch, but I know that he can’t save me. He can’t even save himself from these sorts of situations. I’m going to have to get through this on my own.

I sit up straighter and look him in the eye. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that,” I tell him with far more confidence than I feel.

He looks at me with amusement.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “I am hoping you will join me tonight for dinner.”

“Sure,” I say even though my first reaction is that it’ll conflict with Daphne’s new scheduling system. But Quintus overrides Daphne—and pretty much anyone else—so there are no excuses.

“Good,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at 6:30.”

“Um, you don’t have to do that,” I tell him. “I don’t mind meeting you there.”

“Very well,” he replies. “Seven PM at the Emerald Well.”

With that, he bids me good day and excuses himself, leaving me alone in the corner of the bookstore. I take several deep breaths after he disappears around the bookshelves and tell myself that I have to hold my head high and go on with life. This is how victory goes, I remind myself. This is what it means to be a victor. So I give him a few minutes to leave, and then I stand up on shaking legs and return to my small hoard of books.

I can’t spend all day focusing on tonight, so I turn once more to shelves and try to disappear into the books again.

But I can’t. Quintus’ presence has tainted my appreciation for this place, and I can’t launch into the novels as I had minutes ago. Every time I fall into the pages, reality pulls me right back out like a great big hand has wrapped itself around my abdomen and yanked me away. My stomach aches.

At last I give up. I’ve added a few more books to my pile, but it’s barely anything to show for the amount of time I’ve stared blankly at these bookshelves. I grab a couple and head over to the register where I tell the woman where to deliver the rest of them.

Pitch finds me looking at the dresses in the wardrobe.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks.

“I have a date tonight,” I say, focusing all my attention on the glittery fabric so that I don’t have to look up at him and chance meeting his eye. He didn’t want me going to the bookstore, but I did, and this is my reward. I shouldn’t have to avoid something like a bookstore just to keep from getting hit on by creeps, but things work differently in the Capitol.

“Quintus,” he says. Not a question.

“Who else?” I mutter.

Pitch doesn’t reply for a second. “Juniper, I’m sorry if this is a little too forward,” he says cautiously. “But are you on any sort of birth control?”

What sort of question is that? Pitch and I get personal, but not _that_ personal.

“No, why are you—” I stop dead. “Fuck.”

I risk a quick glance up at him. He watches me with a mixture of sadness and concern. This is one of the things he tried to protect me from, and now he can do no more to keep me safe. He can’t keep me safe from getting attached to tributes, and now he can’t help me when I’m being forced into situations I don’t desire. I turn away and look back at the dress. I knew that I might have to do things I don’t want to, but that always seemed so distant. Disconnected. Now I realize that if there was anything disconnected, it was my own common sense.

“I need to take a shower,” I say quickly as I grab a dark blue dress off its hanger. Without another word, I brush past Pitch and head into the bathroom.

I barely get the water turned on before I break down. The sound of rushing water hides my sobs as I half-crawl into the shower and close the door behind me.

I knew this would happen. Pitch knew it would happen. But I still decided to come anyway. Now whatever happens from here on out is my fault; I could have avoided this if I decided to stay home in District 7 this Hunger Games. I have no one to blame but myself.

The hot water burns my skin. I don’t care. I try to turn it up hotter, but it won’t pass the temperature it’s already at. Slowly I reach for the soap and pump the dispenser until it deposits a wasteful amount in my palm. As I lather the soap on my body, I force myself to stop crying and I give myself what is probably the most depressing pep-talk I’ve ever heard. This was going to happen sooner or later, whether it was now or the next time I mentored. I just need to get through the night.

By the time I drag myself out of the shower and dry off, I’ve managed to pull myself together enough that I’ll be presentable by the time I leave. I dig out some makeup from under the counter (another reminder that they expected me to be in Pitch’s apartment) and begin to work on my face. Just enough to show that I know that this is important, but not too much so that Quintus thinks I really care about what he thinks of me. When it looks good enough, I can’t even tell that I’ve been crying. I pull on my dress and head back into the bedroom.

Pitch lowers one of my books that he has been reading (I’ve never actually seen him read before; I’d comment on it were the circumstances not so shitty) and watches me as I tug on my boots and grab my purse. He stands up from the bed and walks over to me as I tuck a small book into my purse.

“Here,” he says and holds out a couple condoms.

“Thanks,” I reply, and I slip them into the farthest reaches of my purse where I won’t see them unless I am actually looking for them.

He tilts my chin up so that I look at him.

“You’ll be okay,” he says, and he kisses my forehead.


	9. Chapter 9

I arrive at the restaurant fashionably late. Enough to show that I’m not super eager to be here, but not enough to be rude or obstinate. Whatever happens, I can’t let Quintus see how much I don’t want to be with him. He already knows it, of course, but I’d be an idiot to harp on it.

Quintus hones in on me before I have a chance to wonder where he is, and he leads me over to the host’s station where we are immediately seated. I knew nothing about the restaurant coming in, but I’m glad I wore a dress. Not that I thought that someone like Quintus would take me anywhere less than formal, but this is a little . . . weird. Everything gleams with perfection, and nothing exists unless it has a purpose, even if that purpose is to catch your eye to remind you of what a fancy place you’re at.

He pulls out the seat for me at a small table the host leads us to, and I thank him politely and sit down. He takes the other seat, which is placed about a third of the way around the small table.

It’s only once we’re both in our seats and I’m staring at a menu that doesn’t make sense that I realize I don’t know what the hell I’m going to talk with this man about for the duration of the meal. Maybe if I had brought two books, we could have just read. I could have told him it was because we both appreciate literature. I know it would never have worked, but I can dream.

A waiter immediately stops at our table to welcome us and offer us wine and something called “or derves.” Then Quintus and the host exchange a few words about the menu, but I don’t think a single one of those words is in an understandable language. When the host steps away, I turn my attention back to the menu in front of me. But the menu doesn’t make sense no matter how hard I try to understand it. It reminds me of the time Pitch and I went to the restaurant at the riverwalk, but at least I could identify some of the words. Now I’m pretty much at a complete loss.

“Is everything okay?” Quintus asks.

“What do you recommend?” I ask. “I mean, I literally can’t read this menu, so I have no idea what anything is.”

“How about you try the—” and then a string of nonsensical words rolls off his tongue.

“Sure, that sounds great,” I say. “Can you order it for me? I don’t think I even know what you said.”

He smiles. “Of course,” he says.

The waiter returns with the wine that Quintus had selected and he opens the bottle and pours it into both of our glasses. I almost object, but think better of it at the last second. The bright red liquid swirls around the wineglass as it flows from the bottle. The waiter leaves, only to be replaced by another who sets a plate of, well, something on the table. There are little pieces of bread with butter or some other spread, but on top of that are a whole bunch of little black spheres.

“Caviar,” Quintus tells me. “Try it.”

So reluctantly I reach over and pick up a piece of bread. Quintus does the same, but he watches me the entire time, waiting to see my reaction to this high-end food I’ve never tried before.

It’s salty. But there’s something else. I take a second bite to try to place it, but I can’t.

“It’s fish eggs,” he tells me.

“Oh, that’s kind of gross,” I say, but I take a third bite anyhow to see if it really might be fish eggs or if he’s lying to me. I can’t tell.

The waiter returns and takes our order. Quintus speaks for me, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The waiter thanks us, takes the menus, and steps away again.

Now that the wine has been served and we’ve had some of the fish eggs on bread thing, we face the time in which we have to wait for our meal. There’s nothing to distract us from each other, and somehow I have to hold up half a conversation with somebody I loathe.

“You are not a drinker of wine?” he asks, nodding towards my untouched glass.

“Oh, no, I’ve never tried it. I’m actually not old enough to drink,” I say, trying to emphasize the fact that I’m really not old enough for any of this. He only takes it in with a small “mm-hmm.”

“Well, it’s quite a pleasant surprise that you have decided to join us in the Capitol this year,” he says after a pause.

A surprise, sure. Pleasant? Hell no.

A force a smile. Or a grimace.

“Is it not?” he asks.

“Oh. Um, I’m just really socially awkward and have no idea how to talk to people, especially in fancy settings,” I tell him.

His hand touches my knee and I force myself not to pull away. I can’t show him that I hate him. I can’t betray that I’d like nothing more than to punch him in the face right now. He’s not close enough that he can get his fingers worked too far up my dress, but I still don’t want his warm hands on me at all.

“Just relax,” he says as he gently rubs my leg.

“Okay, will do,” I reply. But I don’t. Instead I just try not to throw up all the little fish eggs I just ate.

“Will you be joining us for the bloodbath party?” he asks.

Ugh. If I’m going, it’ll be with Pitch, not with him. But, of course, if Quintus says that I’m going with him, then that’s how it’ll be.

“Isn’t it by invite only?” I ask. “I don’t think I’ve received one.”

“As a victor, you don’t have to worry about it, even if you’re not mentoring,” he says. “And if anyone has a problem with that, tell them they can come talk with me.”

“Thank you,” I say, for lack of better things. I’m rewarded with a rub on the leg.

“So, tell me, how was your trip to the Capitol?” he asks me.

And I try to give him enough information that it satisfies him and sounds like I am reasonably good at conversing despite how awkward I may be. I force myself to ask him a few polite questions about himself, and I manage to find out that he is a significant financial backer for the Hunger Games—enough of an influence that you don’t want to mess with him, but far enough removed that he’s still allowed to donate to tributes. How he actually gets this money, I don’t know. Despite being around him more than I wish, I can’t really figure out how old he is, so I wouldn’t even be able to guess if he might have been around long enough to earn the money or if it all came from him through other means, like an inheritance of some sort.

Regardless, it’s all just another reminder to not piss him off.

The meal has multiple courses. First they bring a small bit of fish. I wonder if it’s the same fish they got the eggs from, or if that’s not how it works. Quintus tells me about something or another that I struggle to pay attention to. Then there’s the main course, which is some sort of meat. And then vegetables, followed by cheese, and then a small dessert of berries with a custard. Each time they serve another course, they whisk away our wine glasses and pour fresh glasses. Sometimes red, sometimes white. I don’t touch it regardless, and Quintus sips politely, never fully finishing a glass. He manages to get me to talk, but I guard my words carefully, never wanting to say something I shouldn’t—something that might endanger me.

“Juniper, I have to ask you something,” he says after the dessert dishes have been cleared away and the waiter has brought us each a cup of coffee. He stirs cream into his mug. “What is your relationship with Pitch?”

Whatever hope that I’d be able to get through this meal unscathed suddenly vanishes, leaving me cold in its wake.

“I-I don’t think I understand,” I stammer.

“I am just curious how you see your relationship with him,” he says.

There’s no way I can answer this. Either I say that Pitch and I are together and then he makes me break it off, or I say that we aren’t, and then I can never be seen with him again. Either way, whatever comfort I have in Pitch will be ripped away from me. Then I think of all the times when I’ve seen other victors interviewed about their tributes and they were able to deflect questions that either couldn’t be answered or shouldn’t be answered.

“Is it a problem?” I venture.

He reaches out and takes my hand. “No, I don’t think it will be,” he says. “As long as you understand how much I appreciate your company.”

“Okay,” I answer. His company. Coldness spreads over me. Now that dinner is over and the plates cleared away, it begins to sink in what is likely expected of me after we leave this place. Even after he moves his hand off mine, I don’t feel any more comfortable because the word “company” rattles around inside my head and I wonder what it actually entails.

The waiter comes over to check on us, and he and Quintus exchange a few polite words I barely hear. Then Quintus is telling me that it’s time to leave, and I look up to find that the waiter is long gone. I stand up, pick up my purse, and follow after him out to the city streets.

“Thanks for dinner,” I say because I’m polite and sometimes remember my manners when I’m being threatened.

He puts his arm around me when we step outside, and I will myself not to flinch. We begin walking down the street, and I just pray that whatever happens next this evening will be fast and I’ll never have to think of it again. But to my surprise, he doesn’t lead me off to some apartment nearby or herd me into an awaiting cab. Instead he pulls me underneath a tree planted in blank patch of the sidewalk and kisses me. I force myself to kiss him back and suppress the urge to vomit.

“Don’t think I notice that you don’t want to be seen with me,” he says when his lips leave mine. He is still far too close for comfort, but I hold still and don’t pull away despite his warm breath on my cheek. “I suppose this will be our secret for the time being. Go, and I’ll see you at the bloodbath party.”

I stand there stunned for a moment before I realize that he is honestly letting me go. That’s it. No threat. No expectations for sex. All I have to do is go to the bloodbath party in a few days’ time which I had planned to do anyhow.

“Yep, okay,” I say to him as I step away. “I’ll be there.”

His eyes linger on me as I turn away, and I walk as calmly down the sidewalk as I can, not willing to break into the all-out run that I wish I could.

Pitch is in his apartment when I return. He lay on the bed with a book in his hands. His eyebrows shoot up when he sees me.

“You’re back earlier than I thought,” he comments.

“Just dinner,” I answer, but despite that, I still make a beeline for the bathroom and throw myself in the shower again to scrub away the sensation of Quintus on my body. I pull on a pair of comfortable pants and a sweatshirt before I leave the bathroom and crawl into bed with Pitch.

“That’s it? Just dinner?” he asks as I make myself comfortable against his body.

“Yeah,” I say. “And a kiss. But that’s all.”

 _That’s all._ Because having dinner and being kissed by somebody I don’t want to be in the same room with is a big success compared to the alternative.

I try to block out the angry thoughts and absorb Pitch’s warmth. _I am safe._


	10. Chapter 10

The tributes head to their second day of training, and Pitch gets ready to go to the mentoring room again. Today I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay in this apartment and go stir crazy, I don’t care. But I’m not setting foot outside and chancing another encounter with Quintus. Besides, Pitch has arranged for Dr. Castillo to come check in on me later this morning.

But when Pitch is about to leave the apartment, Elm stops him.

“I have a bit of a situation,” he says to Pitch, and he glances around to make sure that no one else can hear him. For a second, I wonder if he’s going to say something about having fallen off the wagon, but then I realize that he doesn’t look bothered by the fact that I’m here, too. I watch from my perch on the couch where I clasp a book in my hands.

“What’s up?” Pitch asks.

“I really have no idea how to handle this, but, um, it turns out that Wisteria has a kid back home,” Elm says. “I thought she was pulling my leg, but I looked into it. Hospital records and all. Two years, five months, and three days old.”

“Shit,” Pitch mutters. He rubs his forehead and leans back against the wall.

I furrow my brow. She’s a mother? That’s twisted, but not really surprising if I’m honest with myself. They’ve reaped a tribute who has a small child to take care of, and nobody cares because nobody will sacrifice themselves for her sake.

“I understand if you can’t help me, but I really have no idea what to do about this,” Elm says.

“It’s not going to stop them from sending her to the arena,” Pitch says.

Elm nods and runs a hand through his hair. “I know,” he says. “But I have no idea if I should make it public or not. On one hand, it might help her get sponsorships, but on the other, it’ll bring her entire family, including the kid, into this.”

“They’re going to bring the kid into this regardless if she makes it far enough,” Pitch answers. The Top Eight—they’ll do interviews and dig up any history that they might have. And the Capitol would certainly _love_ to find out about a tribute’s small child.

“Yeah, but the child is being raised as her little sister,” Elm says.

“Oh, geeze, this makes it more complicated,” Pitch admits. He looks confused. “Did you ask her how she wants to handle it?”

“Yeah, she says that she doesn’t want to sell out her daughter in order to buy herself a few more hours of life,” Elm tells him. He sounds so worn down already. It’s only a couple days into this nightmare, and he’s already barely holding himself together. And who could blame him after news like that.

“You’re going to have to respect that,” Pitch instructs him.

“But she could have sponsorships if she—”

Pitch shakes his head. “She doesn’t want it. She knows the consequences.”

Elm nods, defeated.

“I’m sorry,” Pitch says to him. “Unfortunately we can’t do any more for them than what they let us.”

The younger man mumbles a thank you and heads to the elevator. He presses the button and the door opens seconds later. When he disappears, Pitch lets out an audible breath. Then he seems to remember that I’m there, too.

“That’s messed up,” I tell him.

But, again, not surprising. Pitch had tried to drill it into me before that we can only do so much for our tributes, and then we have to leave them to their own devices. If somebody outright declines help or wants a certain aspect left out of their training, we must oblige.

He walks into the sitting room and sits down on the couch by me.

“I know,” he says heavily. “I’m sorry.”

The heaviness in his words extends to his eyes. I lean over and wrap my arms around him. He holds me tightly. Neither of us speaks for several seconds, and then he loosens his grip but keeps me in his arms.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Me? I’m not the one who just had to tell Elm that he can’t use whatever resources he has in order to defend his tribute from the wolves,” I say.

He nods, then says, “Alright, I have to go. You know where to find me if you need anything.”

“Right,” I snort. “I don’t need to be babysat.”

He stares at me, and I wiggle out of his grasp and settle in on the couch. Yeah, I probably do need to be babysat. But that’ll be the job of today’s book, newly purchased at the most recent bookstore of horrors. Pitch stands up and heads towards the elevator.

Later in the afternoon, the elevator dings to indicate somebody’s arrival. I barely hear it over my own thoughts that are so wrapped up within the pages of the book. But the doors slide open with a silent whoosh, and for some reason that sound is what draws me out from my novel. To my surprise, however, it’s not Pitch or Elm or Daphne or the tributes. . . . It’s Esther.

“Hey,” I say to her, confusion twisting my brows. “What’s up?”

“Hi, Juniper. Do you think I could talk to you?” she asks politely. She looks tired, but it could be the permanent dark circles around her brown eyes. Her hair hangs around her shoulders, neatly combed and tucked behind her ears. Esther always looks put-together even when things start to get shitty. I don’t know how she manages it.

“Yeah, okay,” I tell her. I sit up straight and set the book on the coffee table.

She hesitates. “Maybe someplace else?”

“What’s wrong?” I demand.

She smiles slightly. “Nothing,” she says. “Don’t worry, I promise.”

Still, it doesn’t put me at ease. If she had something good to say, she’d just say it right here. But whatever she wants to tell me needs to be off the record or something, so it can’t possibly be something not to worry about. I follow her to the elevator.

Esther won’t tell me what’s up until we reach the street. It’s messed up that we either get to be where no one can see us in the Training Center (but of course we are being listened in on), or where it’s much harder to hear us but we’re in full view of the entire world. We walk side-by-side as we leave the Training Center behind us. It’s only when we’re a couple blocks away that she starts to talk again.

“I’m getting married,” she says.

“Wait, what?” I demand. “You’re only seventeen. Who the hell are you marrying?”

“I know,” she says. “But . . . um, I thought it was a good idea.”

A good idea?! What the hell is she talking about? She’s seventeen years old, and she’s going to get married to someone? And why is this a secret anyhow?

“So who is it?” I ask.

“He’s a Capitol citizen,” she begins, and immediately anger flashes through me. How the shit can she even _think_ about marrying one of these people?!

Esther’s fingers wraps around my wrist. “Please, Juniper,” she says. “Just hear me out.”

It takes a second for me to rein myself in enough that I can at least _pretend_ to be a decent friend. Of course, a decent friend’s first reaction probably wouldn’t be to flip out to begin with.

“Alright,” I say. “Let’s hear it.”

“Do you remember I told you about Joule Leonard from District 3?” she says quietly. “She found me someone. He’s really nice. Of course I don’t love him yet, but maybe someday I will. I just . . . I don’t want to be like the rest of the victors.”

_The rest of the victors._

Like what’s happening to me. What happens to Pitch. What Esther has likely seen over the last four years knowing full well that one day soon enough, she’d be the one being pursued by disgusting and predatory individuals. And she wants out.

In my silence, she continues, “You saw him the other day when we went out to get tea at the café. I thought about introducing you, but I got a little nervous, and then you saw him first. It wasn’t very well planned on my part because I realized I should have told you first.”

“Wait, that guy who was staring at you like a creep?” I ask.

She laughs. “He wasn’t staring like a creep. He was staring, but I was supposed to meet him there, so he was confused about what was going on,” she says. “His name is Maximus, and he’s a professor at the university.”

“Hang on, wasn’t he only like twenty?” I struggle to remember what exactly he looked like, but I can’t really figure out his age. I’m realizing I am absolutely shit at figuring out how old anyone in this place is.

“He’s twenty-three,” she says. “He went to university when he was fifteen. He’s probably younger than some of his students, I would imagine, but he’s well respected.”

He’s younger than his students just like Esther is younger than her tributes.

I wonder if marrying any Capitol citizen guarantees protection, or if you have to marry a high-ranking one who has the authority to tell people no. I swallow hard and focus on the city streets around us. The bright colors, gaudy shops, posters and billboards advertising the Hunger Games. . . . If Esther marries a Capitol citizen, she will be here year round, and there will be no way to escape this all. And how will that go if her husband loves the Hunger Games and doesn’t see why Esther’s nights are filled with dreams of terror? Would a lifetime of that bleak existence be worth escaping the pain she’s trying to avoid?

“If you ever want me to talk with Joule, I can do that for you,” she offers. I know she’s saying this out of kindness, but the idea of marrying one assholes just to avoid other assholes makes me a little sick. I mean, if that’s what Esther wants, I won’t stop her. I can see the value in it.

“No thanks,” I say. “I appreciate it, but. . . . I don’t think it’s for me.”

“I know. You have Pitch, but I just wanted to offer in case some time you change your mind,” she says.

“When’s the wedding?” I ask.

“Two months,” she says. “It would have been sooner but it took forever to get my parents to agree to it. They think that we met when he was tutoring me with homework, so they think I’m madly in love with him but will grow out of it.”

I snort. “Too young for love but not too young to murder people,” I say.

“Be nice,” she says. “It’s not their fault I was reaped.”

I don’t respond to that because I know it’s true, but at the same time, it’s just one of those ridiculous things that surround victory.

“After I won, I tried to have a normal life,” Esther says. “I went back to school and tried to pick up where I left off. Everyone stared at me, and there was no way I could go back to blending in with the rest of my classmates. Some people were in awe, and others made fun of me. But the worst part was that I just _couldn’t_ do the work.”

I let her talk. These are things she’s never told me before, and I had no clue what happened in between the time of her victory and when I met her last year. Sometimes, as I have learned, we victors don’t ask too much about each others’ personal lives.

She continues, “I’d space out in school, or I’d start thinking I was in the arena in the middle of class. It was so embarrassing. My friends tried to hang out with me, but they eventually said I was too weird. I tried to date when I turned fifteen, but that was a complete failure. So I guess I just want . . . something normal? I know you don’t agree, but I hope you’ll at least understand.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I’m not more excited for you. . . . I guess the idea of marrying one of _them_ really weirds me out.”

Esther nods. “I know, and that’s why I realized too late the other day that I shouldn’t spring it on you in the middle of a café,” she says. “I think you’ll find that there are some decent people in the Capitol. Not everyone loves the Hunger Games as much as they’re portrayed to, not any more than everyone in the districts detests them.

“It will be a small wedding. I’m hoping you’ll be able to come . . . if it’s not too inconvenient.”

“Thank you, I’ll definitely try,” I tell her.

She smiles at me in response, and we begin to make our way back to the Training Center.


	11. Chapter 11

“How _dare_ you?! How _could_ you?!”

The screams greet me the moment the elevator opens on the District 7 floor. I blink and am about to reach for the “door close” button when I realize that I literally have nowhere to go. So instead I brace myself for whatever chaos is in store and step into the hallway.

“You had _no right_ to tell anyone!!!”

“You’re going to have to calm down before Daphne returns,” I hear Elm’s voice. Slowly I creep forward and find Wisteria, Elm, and Pitch in the sitting room. Wisteria, of course, is the one screaming. Her face is bright red, and tears run down her cheeks. Elm frantically tries to pacify her. Pitch stands a good distance away, arms crossed over his chest, and watches the mentor and tribute interact.

“I’m NOT calming down! Don’t you _dare_ tell me to calm down after you—” Wisteria stops mid-sentence when she sees me out of the corner of her eye. She whips around to face me. “Get out of here! You don’t even belong here!”

“Wisteria, please leave Juniper out of this,” Elm says.

“Elm told me because he wanted to get a second opinion,” Pitch says to the girl.

“Second opinion?” she spits. “I _told_ him not to tell anyone, and then he goes and does it the first chance he gets!”

“He wants to do what’s best for you,” Pitch tries.

“Bullshit! He’s just trying to get himself a victorious tribute!” she shouts. She turns to Elm, “How am I supposed to trust you if you can’t even keep your mouth shut?!”

Elm stares at her for a second. Her words have knocked the wind out of him, and he fumbles to recover. “I’m sorry, Wisteria,” he says. “Really, I am.”

“You should be! You just went and told my competition!” she says. “I could _die_ because people know information about me that they shouldn’t!”

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Pitch says.

And then because I know that things will go from bad to worse if the girl finds out that I know her secret, too, I pretend to be completely out of the loop and say, “Tell anyone about what?”

“It’s none of your business,” she snarls at me. And she’s right, it’s not. I shouldn’t know her personal information, but Elm wouldn’t have said anything in front of me if he thought I’d blab. Just like he told Pitch because he knew that Pitch wasn’t going to screw him over. But none of that matters to this hysterical girl who sees it as another step towards death. She buries her head in her hands and starts sobbing.

Pitch, Elm, and I exchange looks. None of us know how to deal with this. I know that I got pretty out of control when I was a tribute and they just left me to my own devices until the anger fizzled out. But this is different because the girl has a legitimate reason to be angry at Elm, even if she has no need to worry about Pitch or me saying anything. But it doesn’t do anything to forgive the fact that every interaction with her has been nothing but arguments and accusations.

“Oh, stop crying,” I snap at her.

She looks up at me with such anger that I am simultaneously annoyed and impressed. “What?!” she demands.

“Whatever it was, Elm was just trying to help you,” I say. “You’re going to need help, so don’t piss him off.”

“I don’t need his help,” she retorts.

“Um, _yeah_ , you do,” I say. “Unless you think mentors just sit around twiddling their thumbs during this all?”

She stares hard at me but doesn’t respond. I shrug and head to the bedroom where I can at least have a few seconds of peace.

When I shut the door behind me, I’m appreciative of the fact that it cancels most noise and I don’t have to hear muted shouts of their conversations. Instead I flop onto bed and grab the nearest book. But the one that’s sitting here isn’t mine; it must be whatever Pitch was reading. Too lazy to find where mine went, I open it up to the beginning and start reading.

A few minutes later, Pitch comes in. He throws himself down on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. Neither of us say anything as the silence speaks enough for itself.

“Esther’s getting married,” I tell him.

Pitch’s eyebrows raise, and he rolls over onto his side so that he can see me better. “Isn’t she twelve?” he asks.

I laugh. “Seventeen, but that was my reaction, too,” I say. “She’s marrying some professor at the university. Capitol citizen. He’s apparently twenty-three or something.”

“I’m pretty much out of the loop,” he says. “I didn’t realize that she was dating anyone.”

“Me neither,” I tell him. I hesitate to say too much since Esther wasn’t willing to confide in me within the Training Center. “She said that she could see if he had a friend if I was interested.”

Pitch watches me carefully. “What did you say?”

I shake my head. “I’m not interested,” I tell him. And then, after a second’s hesitation, “Pitch, what happens if Quintus wants to have sex with me and I tell him no?”

“You don’t,” Pitch says carefully.

“Why?” I ask. “He can’t _force_ me, can he? Surely there are rules about that here. Even the Capitolites have some boundaries, right?”

A look of fleeting sadness passes through his eyes before he says, “I need to go check in with Sage. Juniper . . . you can’t tell him no, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, but I can only watch Pitch in confusion as he pushes himself out of bed and heads towards the door, intentionally avoiding my eye. And then he’s gone before I can even gather together the words to ask him what’s going on.

I’m not a mentor this year, so they have no tribute to kill. I suppose they could just off Sage or Wisteria by association, which I wouldn’t put beyond them. How powerful is Quintus? How much influence does he have over the Hunger Games?

I curl up and stare at the pages of the book until it’s time for dinner. At that point, I’m groggy and somewhat disoriented, and I realize that I must’ve fallen asleep. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and head towards the dining room.

Whatever happened after I left the sitting room hasn’t fully dissolved. Tension hangs thickly in the air, and although neither Daphne nor Sage know what’s going on, they can clearly pick up on it, if Sage’s large, fearful eyes are sign enough. I take my place next to Pitch as the avoxes begin setting out the dishes on the table.

Daphne attempts to get people to talk, but everybody keeps to themselves. Our own thoughts bog us down, and the food keeps our mouths too busy to try to slog out of our quandaries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, guys, I'm not going to say that I spent the day writing instead of doing what I was supposed to do, but at least I was productive in some aspect of life. That's all.


	12. Chapter 12

Pitch takes the book out of my hands. “This is mine,” he says. “Get your own.”

I stare up at him as he settles himself into bed next to me and begins to flip through the pages. I don’t know whether I should be happy that he’s suddenly taken to reading or annoyed that now we have to share books.

“I never understood why you like to read so much, and I’m not sure I know how you can manage it, but I think I get it now,” he says.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“It’s the same reason I like to go out on walks through ‘fake nature’ areas even though it drives you mad,” he says. “We need something to distract ourselves from whatever’s going on.”

He holds the book out to me, and I take it out of his hand.

“I want to talk to you, Juniper,” he says. He meets my eyes. “I’m sorry I was so short with you earlier. . . .”

“That’s what you call being short with someone?” I ask. “A little out of character, sure, but not short.”

He smiles, but there’s no humor in the expression. Instead he searches my face for something, I don’t know what. When at last he finds—or perhaps doesn’t find—whatever he’s looking for, he reaches over for my free hand and takes it in his own.

“I won the Hunger Games at eighteen, as you know,” he says, and I know I’m in for a story. I set down my book and give him my full attention. I curl up on my side so that I’m facing him, but I don’t let go of his hand. “I found out right then and there what it means to be a victor. They’ve toned down the number of interviews new victors are subjected to, but I managed to set a record seven interviews following my victory. . . . And things only went downhill. You know, of course, the twist for the Quarter Quell that year. People couldn’t get enough of me.

“I, um, I was introduced to my first patron within the year when I returned to the Capitol for the victory tour. I told her no. And, um. . . .” He struggles with this, and I almost can’t watch him as he gets choked up, yet I also can’t tear myself away. “My mom and my brother died in a car accident a couple days later.”

“Pitch . . .” I start and squeeze his hand, but he shakes his head.

“Within the first two years, I lost almost my entire family,” he says. “I learned that if they tell you to do something, you do it. And you do it right. There’s no half-assing anything because they don’t care—they’ll do whatever they can to make sure that you’re doing things to their standards.”

His words sink in. He’d told me this, in a roundabout way. Last year when he first told me about his “patrons” . . . and again when he was trying to keep me from lashing out at powerful Capitol citizens. He didn’t tell it to me in so many words, but he was trying to convey the sentiment without baring too much of his history. Their punishments don’t stay within the realm of the Hunger Games. . . . They don’t just kill your tributes and then let you go. This is deeper, more insidious.

I think of my parents at home and how upset they were that I returned to the Capitol again this year. They don’t know the extent to which I was hurt and humiliated last year, and they would never know what I would have done—or not done—that would ultimately get them killed. I feel foolish for even toying with the notion of telling Quintus no, especially after multiple people had already driven it in how powerful he is. He’s disgusting and slimy, but the extent to which he can hurt me and those I love exceed far beyond what I had consciously thought.

I can’t help the tears that gather in my eyelids and begin to trickle out of the corner of my eyes, and I don’t know if they’re for me or for Pitch.

Pitch reaches out with his free hand and tucks my hair behind my ear. His fingers stroke my scalp. It calms me, but it does nothing to ease the pain.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It seems cruel that we’d go through so much effort to save our tributes, and this is the life they have to look forward to,” he murmurs.

“Well I, for one, am happy that you got me out of the arena,” I tell him.

He smiles, and his hand strokes my cheek. “Me too.”

But then something pops into my mind, and as disturbing as it is, I have to ask: “Quintus was one of your patrons, wasn’t he?”

Pitch’s hand freezes and he drops it away from my face.

“Yes,” he says. “Very short-lived. Very weird.”

I don’t know what defines “weird” in a situation like this, but I’m too afraid to ask. Instead I try, “When was this?”

He takes a deep breath. I can’t read his expression, but I know what he’s going to say before he says it.

“While you were in the arena,” he says. He frowns. “Though . . . I wonder now if it wasn’t me he was interested in at all. . . .”

“Eww,” I mutter. “This is too bizarre.”

Pitch laughs, and says, “I don’t think it could have been said better. Come here.”

I let go of his hand and move against him. He wraps his arms around me. And then he . . . claps?

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Some of these lamps turn on and off if you clap,” he says.

I don’t know what to say to that. I think he has officially gone insane. So I leave the comfort of his arms long enough to reach over and turn off the light.

 _I am safe,_ I tell myself as I close my eyes. But when I try to reassure myself that my family is safe, too, I falter. They aren’t. They’re less safe than I am, and I balance in a very dangerous place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there should be "Awkward discussions: the drinking game" for this story.


	13. Chapter 13

I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that I left my book—the one I had actually been reading—in the sitting room when Esther came to visit me. I can’t return to sleep knowing that it’s out there, so I carefully pry myself away from Pitch and slip out of bed. Daphne’s policies never mentioned that we had to stay in our rooms after “bedtime,” only that we had to be there when the clock struck the designated hour. Part of me worries that she’s locked us in our rooms. But to my relief, the door knob turns beneath my fingers, and I step out into the dimly-lit hallway.

As I creep towards the sitting room, I realize that the light from the hallway comes from the dining room. A figure sits in low lighting at the table, and as I step closer, I realize it’s Elm.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask him, and then I notice the glass at the table in front of him.

He stares at me blearily. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was tired. Maybe he is. But he’s also been drinking.

He sees me staring at the glass.

“Pitch told you then?”

I look up at him and don’t answer.

“I guess none of us are very good at keeping each other’s secrets,” he mutters.

The two of us wait in silence for one to say something. Maybe he’ll think I’ll judge him for drinking. Maybe I’ll think he’ll judge Pitch for telling me about his alcoholism. Finally I walk over, pull out a chair, and sit down across from him.

“It’s hard to look at you sometimes,” he tells me, but he doesn’t take his eyes off my face.

“Why’s that?” I ask.

“I wonder if it’s hard for Pitch to look at me, too,” he continues as though I didn’t say anything.

“I’m not following,” I say to him.

He looks down at the glass and runs a thumb down its side, smoothing away the condensation that has accumulated. I wonder if he’s too far into his drink to really be having a coherent conversation. Since I’ve never had any Capitol alcohol (aside from a sip of rum once), I don’t know how strong it is, or how likely it is to whisk away his senses.

“We’re alive because somebody else is dead,” he says.

“The same goes with the rest of the victors,” I reply.

“I think, what would it be like if Lief hadn’t died, if he was the victor. And then I realize that you’d be dead, too, if that were the case,” he mumbles. “I have not brought a tribute to victory yet, but if I do, it’ll be at the expense of somebody else’s tribute.”

“That’s the design of the Hunger Games.” I furrow my brow and watch as he lifts the glass to his lips and drinks. “How many have you had already?”

He sets the glass down gently on the table. “This is my second,” he says. “That’s all. Then I’ll go to bed. . . .”

“You’re an alcoholic. You’re not supposed to be drinking at all,” I point out.

He stares at me with alcohol-saturated irritation. “Are you going to report me?” he asks. He’s not scared; he’s annoyed.

“How is getting drunk going to help you mentor?” I ask him, directly avoiding the question because I know I should tell Pitch, but I also don’t like feeling like a playground tattletale.

He snorts. “I think I’ve already lost my tribute’s trust, so it’s not like it’s going to hurt my relationship with her,” he mutters, his eyes back on his drink. Only a quarter of the glass remains.

“Elm,” I say. “You can’t get drunk just because this all sucks.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because you’ll make the rest of us jealous that we can’t be drunk, too,” I tell him, hoping that a bit of humor might help push him in the right direction. But I don’t know what I’m doing; I’ve never had to deal with an alcoholic. I’ve had friends who have been drunk, but never to the point that they couldn’t live without drinking. Trying to point somebody towards the toilet is very different than convincing someone that a sip of alcohol will destroy not just his life but the lives of those he’s responsible for.

“In a couple years, you’ll probably be like me, too,” he says. “Many of us are. Some can just hide it better than others. If you go to any floor of this godforsaken building right this moment, you’ll probably find other victors sitting at their dining room tables like me.”

The thought that he might be right twists my stomach. Pitch had said that he hadn’t realized that Elm had a problem until he was told; how many others can slide underneath the radar without anyone noticing?

“I won’t,” I tell him, sitting up straighter.

He laughs quietly. “No, you won’t,” he agrees. “You’ll just beat people up every time you get angry.”

I open my mouth to say something and then close it again. Is that common knowledge or had somebody told him about everything that went on last year?

“People notice if you start punching everybody, but nobody cares if you have a drink,” he says. “And then it becomes a slippery slope.” He throws back the rest of the alcohol and looks down into the empty glass. I wonder if he’s contemplating having more.

“Go to sleep,” I tell him. “Please? You need to be able to mentor still.”

He exhales sharply. “Right.”

But he stands up and takes his glass back with him to his bedroom, leaving me alone in the dimly-lit dining room. I stare at the watermark on the table where the glass had been moments before.

 _What if he’s right?_ I think. What if I’m going to be like him—like so many other victors—in a couple years? What if I can’t live with killing people and watching kids die and having sex with people I don’t like, so I decide that it’s easier to live in a constant state of drunkenness to dull the pain? I force myself to stand up from the table and head to the sitting room where I find my book abandoned on the coffee table. I pick it up and hesitate briefly before I return to the bedroom.

As I curl up next to Pitch again and hug the book to my chest, I wonder how he manages it all. If it’s not alcohol, how does Pitch get through year after year of watching kids die and being prostituted out to wealthy and abhorrent Capitol citizens? I listen to his slow, even breathing until sleep pulls on my eyelids.

In the morning, I tell Pitch about finding Elm in the dining room.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he mutters as he pulls on his socks.

I lean against the wall, arms crossed over my chest, and watch as he finishes getting ready for the day. The last day of training before the tributes begin preparing for the interviews. I won’t see Pitch much tomorrow since he’ll be spending hours with Sage and the remainder of his time will be with the rest of the mentors trying to get things sorted out before the tributes go to the arena.

“What do you plan on doing about it?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I’ll have to think,” he says. “Many victors are like this, so it’s not like he’s going to get in trouble as long as he can maintain his mentor duties. But. . . .”

“But?”

He pauses and looks up at me. “It’s not really a good life, being drunk all the time,” he says.

“You know from experience?”

Pitch shakes his head. “No, I’ve been drunk, but never on a constant basis,” he tells me. “It’s just that you have no chance of happiness if you’re wasted like this.”

He puts on the shoes and ties the laces.

“It doesn’t sound like he thinks he has a chance of happiness at all,” I say as Pitch stands up.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “That’s the problem. . . . What do you plan on doing today?”

“The usual. Reading, probably,” I tell him. “Trying to stay away from weird people.”

“Why don’t you come with me to the mentoring room?” he suggests.

“Oh, you don’t trust me to read by myself?” I tease.

“Or maybe sitting in this apartment is enough to make anybody go crazy,” he tells me.

But as I pull on my shoes, I know that he’s not worried about me being cooped up inside the District 7 apartment. For whatever reason, he wants me with him. I don’t understand why, and I’m not even confident enough in my assessment to ask him. But I grab a book and walk with him to the elevator.


	14. Chapter 14

The mentor room buzzes with excitement as victors chatter with each other. Some keep their voices low and their heads down as they exchange quiet words. But others, like the Career victors, don’t care if people hear what they’re saying. Nobody’s surprised that the six tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 have declared an alliance this year, and from their conversation, I don’t think there’s any great “secret” they need to protect from other mentors. The Career pack is typical: strong, bloodthirsty kids ready to spatter the rest of their competition across the ground.

“Hey, Elm.” Terra of District 12 walks over and plops down in Pitch’s chair. “What do you think about an alliance? You, me, Phoenix.”

Terra is pretty. She’s about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Doesn’t wear a single bit of makeup on her pale face, but also doesn’t need to unless she’s forced into it by the bright overhead lights of interviews. She wears her plain brown hair drawn back in a ponytail except for a few shorter strands that can’t be captured by the rubber band, and I have never seen it in any other style. Her district partner, Phoenix, sits back at the District 12 chairs, watching the interaction between Terra and Elm. He’s older since he won the 102nd Hunger Games, but aside from Terra, he’s the most recent victor for District 12. He’s darker in complexion than his fellow victor. A little rougher, too, like he was made for the mines. They make a weird pair, but I’ve never heard anything bad about either of them.

“Is that happening?” Elm asks, glancing beyond Terra towards Phoenix.

“Sure better be,” she says. “Brier and Winter—our tributes—are going to talk with your girl Wisteria today.”

“What do they see in her?” Elm prods cautiously.

Terra eye’s flick up at me. She doesn’t say anything, but the gesture is enough.

“I get it,” I say. “I’m moving on.”

Whatever their conversation is about, I’m not included. Too bad because I’m really intrigued about what other tributes see in Wisteria. But I can’t blame them for not wanting me around; it’s not like I’m mentoring a tribute who could potentially be in their alliance.

Pitch is in conversation with Demeter, so I head to the lounge just through the doorway.

Whoever built the lounge meant to give the tributes the briefest taste of respite from their duties but not enough to really give them a break. A table against one wall provides food and beverages of all sorts. With disgust, I realize just how messed up it is that they give the mentors free access to alcohol here in one of the most stressful rooms in the country. Aside from that table, couches fill the majority of the room, with the occasional television—currently muted—displaying recaps of the reaping and predictions from wealthy people who have no idea that their money could be spent is so much more productive ways. I know from experience that these couches fold out into beds so that when things get really rough in the Hunger Games and the mentors don’t want to leave their monitoring stations, they can come in here and crash. What more do they need than bed-couches and alcohol? Oh, right, the punching bag that hangs in a corner.

I find Esther sitting on a couch in conversation with Rikuto. She smiles when she sees me. I lower myself on the couch opposite them.

“Are your tributes in an alliance?” I ask. A District 6 / District 8 Alliance probably wouldn’t last very long, but I wouldn’t be surprised that tributes from districts less likely to win would ally together since other, more-likely-to-be-successful tributes would steer clear of them.

“Maybe. But if they are, it also might be a secret,” Rikuto says. “Sorry, Juniper. I know that you’re not mentoring, but we also have to be careful, you know?”

I nod. “Yeah, I get it. I was already kicked out of one room for the same reason.”

“If we get another victor, we could sit out a year, too,” Esther says dreamily, and in that second I realize what a slap in the face it must be for me to be sitting here with them, all of us so terribly aware that I don’t need to be here while they have no choice. Not that Esther would imply that at all, but it’s true.

“I’m just going to sit here and read,” I tell them. “I’ll stay out of your way.” I stand up and find another couch not too far from them, but I notice that neither of them protests.

Now this is an aspect of the Hunger Games I haven’t yet seen. The way everybody becomes so defensive that they block out their friends and acquaintances. Doesn’t matter if it’s a quiet gesture or a gentle let-down . . . people don’t want me too close to them because I can only hurt them. An overheard comment or misunderstood remark could destroy their tributes’ chances, and there’s no actual benefit to having me around because they can’t glean the same information from me.

I open the book and ignore the anger that saturates my chest cavity.

Time passes, and through it I am vaguely aware of people coming and going. Their presence forms more of an afterthought to the storyline I am dragged into.

At last Pitch comes to find me. He lowers himself down on the couch, careful not to sit on my outstretched legs.

“You want to go to lunch?” he asks.

I glance at him over the top of the book. “Details?”

“I’m not sure where, but a few of us are heading out of here,” he says. “Someplace private so we won’t be bothered.”

If it were just Pitch, I’d go. But I think about the other mentors here and wonder if they really want me around. For a moment, I consider just wallowing in my novel and waiting for the irritation and self-pity to vanish, but I finally close my book. Pitch wants me around, at least, and I’m not going to deny that.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” I say.

We return to the backroom of a restaurant I visited many months ago when I first arrived in the Capitol as a mentor. But now instead of Isolde, Lady, and Demeter in what they declared to be a girls-only meal, there’s a whole gaggle of non-Career victors who have decided to find refuge in the private room of the restaurant they call the Casa.

The staff shoves together the tables of this private room so that we can all sit in one place. I plop down between Pitch and Phoenix. It turns out we don’t need to bother ordering food because it’s brought automatically to the table, so that’s pretty good. But I have no menu to distract myself from the fact that I don’t have a place in the conversation as they tie up a few loose ends about mentoring plans.

Then the discussion turns to various aspects of life in the Capitol, and I find myself staring at the pictures on the wall. Scenes of nature, each one invoking emotion. They capture the world around us from a raw, striking perspective. I focus on the closest one, a picture of waves crashing onto the beach, and feel myself being drawn away into yet another world I’ve never known. This world, however, is real; this is our own country’s shoreline, a place I have never seen except in a few old videos in science class and recaps of the Hunger Games. The photo looks nothing like that.

“Do you like the pictures?” Elm asks from across the table.

I blink and look at him and realize with a start that the wait staff has brought the food and everybody else is eating. Somebody has scooped spaghetti onto my plate, and I didn’t even notice.

“Yeah,” I manage.

“They’re Isolde’s,” he says to me.

“Isolde?” I ask. “Our Isolde?”

“Yes,” he says. “She’s extremely talented, isn’t she?”

“How did she--?”

Mountains. Valleys. Meadows. Deserts. Coastlines. Ocean.

A single person took all these photos?

Of course, that makes sense. The pure emotion behind them unites each one into a whole, even if every picture expresses it in its own way. Individual people photographing different parts of the country would not be able to coordinate their talents like this.

“She has a pass that lets her travel the districts under guidance,” Elm explains. “Very rare. Very hard to get. But I can see why they let her.”

She never told me she was a photographer.

I guess that goes into the file of “all the things we don’t actually know about each other despite being forced together in the most intimate and personal of ways to watch kids die.”

“She’s so good,” I murmur as I scan the photos once again.

“It’s her victor talent,” Elm tells me. “That’s why they let her travel so much. Also helps that she’s from the Capitol’s favorite district, of course.”

Some people have useful talents. I don’t. Mine is chainsaw carving but I’m not allowed to touch the chainsaw so I just draw some pictures on paper and vaguely gesture at a stump of a tree and tell people what I “see” in the heartwood. I think they sell some of these carvings in a store here in the Capitol, but I do it so infrequently that I don’t really care much about it. How fascinating it would be to have a talent that you enjoy . . . and one that would allow you to see the world.

Isolde’s pictures must sell for a ridiculous amount of money. Not that she needs it. I don’t even know if we get to keep the money we make from our talents or if it goes towards building a better arena for the next generation of murderers.

Elm says nothing more, and I once again disappear into the pictures. This time I find myself enraptured by a desert with deep yellows and oranges. Mountains of purple fill the background. _To actually be able to see that in person. . . ._

“You ready?” Pitch asks.

I blink and look at him. The table is cleared. Half the mentors are gone. Pitch pushes back his chair and stares at me.

“Juniper, are you okay?” he asks.

“Um, yeah, sure,” I tell him, but it takes a second to ground myself back in reality enough that I can stand up without tripping over the legs of my chair. Pitch studies me carefully for a second until I grunt in irritation at his prying eyes, and then he leads me out of the restaurant.

The sounds of the city fill my ears, and the sudden change from the relative quiet darkness of the restaurant to the bright chaos of the streets sets me on edge. I grit my teeth and stick close to Pitch as though I’m afraid he’ll leave me behind.

When we get to the Training Center, I want nothing more than to be upstairs in the apartment away from everybody else. Pitch starts towards the corridor that leads to the mentor room, but I don’t go with him. When he realizes that I’ve put on the brakes, he stops, too, and waits for me.

“I’m going upstairs,” I say. “I’m tired, I guess.”

He takes a few steps back in my direction. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I think lunch was just too heavy,” I say lamely.

He rolls his eyes. “You didn’t eat anything,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “I’ll see you later.”

Without waiting for a response, I head across the lobby and towards the main elevators to take me to the District 7 apartment.


	15. Chapter 15

The tributes return from the training room earlier than they did over the past couple days; first Sage, then Wisteria. Neither of them look particularly happy, but then again, they just had their private training session and that alone can be really intimidating. Neither Pitch nor Elm have returned from mentoring, but that must still fit within Daphne’s schedule because she sits at the dining room table working on whatever stuff escorts do when they’re not bossing people around, and she doesn’t make a single comment about the fact that they have not yet returned.

I head back to the bedroom to grab a sweatshirt, and when I step into the hallway again, I nearly run into Wisteria. She glowers at me and moves away. In that one second, both irritation and pity curl through me, and I act before I can stop myself.

“Can I have a word?” I say perhaps more sharply than I ought to. I don’t know what I plan on saying at this point, but I know that I have to say _something_. She’s driving us all mad in this apartment despite people’s best efforts to help her.

She rolls her eyes but turns and faces me.

“This sucks, and I know it, but try not to beat up Elm too much,” I say to her.

“Maybe he should be a better mentor,” she says.

Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. “As one formerly angry tribute to another angry tribute, stop it. It’s not going to help you—it’ll just hurt you, in fact,” I tell her. “You need to focus on winning, not on getting pissed off with your mentor.”

“Oh, am I hurting his feelings?” she snaps.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know that mentoring isn’t easy, and having a tribute who won’t listen probably doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Right, because _he’s_ the one who is getting screwed over here,” she says. Bitterness clings heavily to her words, and I know that I’m getting nowhere with her. Anger rises in me, and I swallow hard to force it back down so that it doesn’t spew forth from my mouth.

“I don’t know if you missed the memo, but pretty much everybody gets fucked over by the circumstances here,” I say. This time, the sharpness is intentional. “Sure, if you die, we still live, but watching tributes get offed year after year after year really isn’t an ideal situation.”

“So this is about him?” she laughs incredulously.

“No, it’s about me,” I snap. “I’m tired of hearing you blame Elm and Pitch and whoever else for your shitty situation. Get over it. Get over yourself. Understand that Elm is trying to help you and that Pitch won’t screw you over because that’s not the type of people they are. You cooperating with them means that it’ll be easier for both of you . . . and it will be _far_ easier for me when I don’t have to listen to you blame people for the fact that you’re going to the Hunger Games.”

She looks stunned. But the expression only lasts a few seconds before it shifts to irritation.

“I have a chance, you know,” she tells me, as though I had given her that little speech because I doubted her abilities. “I’m not just going to roll over.”

“Great, really,” I say. “But can you please stop freaking out on the mentors?”

“You are all insufferable,” she mutters. “I’m going to die and this is about you? You are deranged.”

I shrug. “Normal people don’t make it out of the arena alive,” I say. “So don’t expect myself or anyone else to be ‘normal.’ Who cares if it is about me or about you as long as you get the best shot you can have?”

She says nothing for a moment. I think that maybe I’ve cracked through her shell enough to deliver her some reality. Maybe she’ll give Elm a break and not drive him to drinking every night.

But then she says, “You expect me to listen to somebody who _volunteered_ for this?”

“I volunteered for a girl without functioning legs, but if you want to throw me into the pile with the Careers, I guess I’m not going to stop you,” I reply through gritted teeth. Part of me wants to walk away from her right here and now, but I know that I don’t want to leave her on bad ground. I don’t want her to think I don’t believe she could get out of this alive, so I say, “You do have a chance, Wisteria. Don’t throw this away because you’d rather deliver a few cheap shots.”

Before she responds, I head down the hallway and wonder why the hell I’m so shitty at giving pep talks.

We eat dinner early so that we can make sure to watch the release of the training scores. Wisteria broods in her seat and barely talks to anyone except when somebody directly addresses her, and she refuses to look in my direction.

Pitch and Elm give advice to their tributes as we eat, neither of them caring much for privacy at this point. Every chance they get, they need to make sure that they can pump the kids full of information about survival: how to find food, where to obtain water, how to handle situations that don’t have many resources, the best types of wood for fires, what challenges a cold/hot/dark/muggy/etc. environment could bring. Things that the tributes probably don’t know and likely wouldn’t have picked up while trying to handle swords or learn about building fires.

I pick at my food and manage to eat a little before the avoxes clear away the plates and we head off to the sitting room.

Daphne turns the television on as we get ourselves settled in. Tasha and Leander appear and greet everyone warmly like we’re all good friends. I squeeze into a couch next to Pitch and watch the television screen play recaps and interviews despite my revulsion. The Hunger Games announcer, Janice Lovely, and the interviewer, Caligula Klora, grow more and more excited as the time comes to announce the scores. When they’re not talking, they show footage of the reapings, making comments about the various tributes’ “performances.”

Then, at last, Janice announces that it’s time.

Everyone in the District 7 apartment falls into a hush.

The announcer begins with District 1, of course. They both receive 10s. Way to start out the evening. The boy from District 2 gets a 9 and the girl gets an 8. Then the pair from District 3 each receive 4s. The boy from District 4 gets a 9 and the girl gets a 10. An extremely strong Career pack, I realize with a lurch. District 5 receives more modest but respectable 6s. District 6 gets a 2 and a 3.

“Sage Thornethorn of District 7 receives a 4 in training,” comes Janice’s voice, and everyone in the room lets out a collective breath. Not great, but definitely not the lowest. “Wisteria Smith of District 7 receives a 7 in training.”

Not bad. Not bad at all. Not _great_ , but you never expect non-Career tributes to get above an eight, if they’re lucky to achieve even that.

The rest of the scores continue. Nothing particularly impressive until it comes to District 12 in which the boy receives a 7 and the girl an 8.

When the scores end, Pitch and Elm take their tributes to the private mentoring rooms to discuss the scores and go over possible strategies. This leaves me with Daphne, Tasha, and Leander. The three of them keep themselves occupied while I stare blankly at the television screen and wonder what to make of the scores the tributes received. Within minutes, however, Tasha pulls Leander away to go over a new outfit design she’s working on for the interview so that our tributes can be coordinated. They head off to the dining room table, but Daphne stays behind.

“What do you think of the training scores?” the escort asks me. She sits in a chair adjacent to the couch I’m on and rests her head on her fist, her elbow on the arm of the chair, as she waits for my answer.

I shrug. “Pretty numerical?” I try.

Her attempts at small talk have failed, and I hope it’ll be the end of it. Instead she says, “How long have you and Pitch been together?”

It must be a universal truth that escorts cannot stay out of the personal lives of the victors whose districts they’re assigned to.

“A year,” I answer.

She nods. “I understand that last Hunger Games was challenging for you,” she says.

I don’t know what information she’s trying to get out of me, so I just nod. “Yep.”

“You seem to be doing okay now,” she comments, and though she tries to pass it off as a casual remark, she’s clearly fishing for answers of some sort. But if she wants information out of me, I’m going to make her work for it; no way I plan on just feeding her bits of my personal life because she has the guts to pry. She continues, “I just heard that your relationship hindered your ability to mentor.”

“That was, um, last year,” I say. “Really got hot and steamy in this apartment. Things are different this year; we keep it to the bedroom.”

If she buys this, she’s an idiot. I can’t lie to save my life. Not wanting to give away any more, I shut my mouth.

Despite wanting to know what was going on and the veracity of the rumors she heard, Daphne doesn’t pry into the details. What I told her seems to be enough, and she nods thoughtfully. I turn back to the television and pretend to be supremely interested in whatever they’re saying even though it makes me want to punch the screen right in the center because I can’t actually punch the people who are on it.

_I wonder if Daphne is in direct contact with Lala._

Ugh. I force myself to shove that thought out of my head. It’s not like I can do anything about it anyhow besides just keep as much distance—emotional, if not physical—between myself and the new escort.

I wince as the television suddenly displays a glimpse of the bloodbath from last Hunger Games. A flash of a blade, and a tribute falls to the ground in a spurt of blood. The announcers use it as reference to make predictions for this coming bloodbath, as though the actions of previous tributes will influence the actions of this year’s.

Suddenly I’m acutely aware that Daphne is staring at me. And then, of all things, I swear I hear her say, “This is all so disgusting.”

But when I turn and look at her, she’s focused on the television like she said nothing at all.


	16. Chapter 16

Today the tributes prepare for their interviews. Pitch spends the morning in the mentoring room while Sage works with Daphne for performance advice, and then after a quiet lunch in which nobody says much of anything to me because they’re too wrapped up in preparation for the final days of prep week, Pitch and Sage head off to their mentoring room to discuss strategy for the interview.

Over the past few days, I’ve burned through a considerable percentage of my pile of books, and I fear that I won’t have enough to last much longer. The thought of returning to the bookstore nauseates me, and I resign myself to the idea of re-reading books so that I don’t have to set foot in another store. The logical thing would be to just read slower, but I can’t. It doesn’t work that way.

When the tributes disappear to their rooms for a few minutes’ rest before dinner, Pitch comes and gets me off the couch. He nods towards the hallway, and I follow after him, and the two of us go into the bedroom.

“There’s a bit of a problem in the mentor room,” he tells me.

I sigh and sit down on the bed cross-legged. Of course there is. Because nothing around here is ever truly functional.

“I’m guessing that it’s not that they ran out of alcohol,” I say.

He stares at me without a hint of amusement before he leans back against the dresser.

“Apparently someone lodged a formal complaint that you’re here,” he says.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask. Anger flares through me, and I ball my hands into fists to control myself. “Is it Daphne? If she’s trying to mess with us, I swear I’ll—”

“No, it’s one of the other victors,” he cuts me off.

I start, and the anger ebbs momentarily before it rushes back in. One of the _victors_ doesn’t want me hanging around? What the hell is going on with that? I stare at the comforter beneath me and go through the list of victors who are mentoring this year, flipping through the options of assholes who have decided to interfere with matters that don’t concern them. Who cares if I’m keeping Pitch company? What we do—or, in this case, don’t do—is none of their concern.

“They say that it’s not fair that a tribute has two mentors,” he continues, and then I realize that it’s not really about me, specifically. I look up at Pitch as he says, “Nobody believes that we’re in a relationship, so I guess there are some who think that this might be a tactic to give our tribute—my tribute—an unfair advantage.”

“What the hell?” I demand. On second thought, this is definitely personal. “Who in their right mind looks at me and thinks that I’m _that_ great of a mentor anyhow?”

Pitch comes over and sits on the bed near me. “Juniper, no matter how you felt last year, you did a good job as mentor,” he says. “Your tribute made it to the top five, she outsmarted many other tributes several years older than her, and she raked in a lot of money. There was serious talk that she could have been victor.”

Tears spring to my eyes and I stare down at the floor. I don’t want to talk about this. Knowing that Rosa could have won is one thing, but knowing that people actually expected her to win, even if they didn’t fully believe it, is another. She was nothing but expendable merchandise that they cast aside the moment that they found other tributes who were shinier and more exciting. And none of this was _me_ anyhow. I didn’t tell Rosa to manipulate those people, I didn’t help her plan out her traps, I didn’t tell her how to navigate the field of fellow tributes. I did nothing. That was all her doing. How could anyone give me credit for that?

“Juniper. . . .”

I force myself to get ahold of my emotions. Anger, sadness, whatever this is. I stare straight ahead at the floor and try to sop up the mess inside me before I have a chance to slip on it and make things worse.

“So what does everyone want?” I ask sharply. “Should I just go off to hang out with whatever Capitolite is willing to take me in until the Hunger Games are over?”

“You know that none of them want that,” he says, his calm voice trying to smooth out the jaggedness of my words. “They might think that Sage has an unfair advantage and thus want you to distance yourself from the situation, but they don’t want you to get hurt in the process.”

And yet I will be. Even if I go back to my apartment, I’ll just be left to watching the Hunger Games by myself. Days, weeks, I don’t know. I can’t leave the apartment because I’ll get picked up by disgusting men, and I can’t come to the Training Center because it would somehow be cheating. So, what, I just sit in my room and slowly go insane?

“So is this how it’s going to be every time we come to the Capitol?” I ask. “People telling us where to go, who to hang out with, who to fuck? I mean, I guess I expected it from the Capitolites, but not from other victors.”

“They aren’t—” He stops himself and then tries again, “Yes, the Capitol will tell us what to do. The other victors aren’t. They’re making assumptions that they shouldn’t, but honestly, if another district looked like it had two mentors for one tribute, I might be concerned, too.”

I don’t care. That’s not what bothers me. If somebody is concerned, let them be. But they can’t just dictate the situation because they assume that Pitch or I feel one way or another about each other. It was pretty clear last year that it was faked, but things changed. Not in the way anyone would expect them to, of course, but people have no right to accuse us without at least finding out the truth.

A thought jumps into my head and tumbles out of my mouth.

“Pitch, let’s get married,” I say.

He starts. “Juniper, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says. But despite his kneejerk answer, his expression remains confused.

“Why not?” I ask. “I’m tired of everybody telling us how we should or shouldn’t feel towards each other, when we can and can’t hang out, etcetera. So let’s just get married and then they can’t tell us no anymore.”

Pitch eyes me warily, but I hold his gaze and refuse to turn away. A hint of a sad smile plays on his lips.

“I’m fifteen years older than you,” he says.

“Which doesn’t make a difference when we let people run away with whatever rumors they want,” I say. “If that was really an issue, we wouldn’t still be hanging out, would we?”

He knows I’m right, and yet he tries again, “I wouldn’t make a good husband. I have too many people I have to answer to in the Capitol; it’s bad enough as it is when I have to leave you. I don’t want to be committed to you and also be, ah, venturing around the Capitol.”

“Again, I don’t care,” I say.

“You will,” he responds.

“Fight me,” I say.

He laughs. “Really, Juniper?”

“Do you remember last year when you wanted to kiss me because you wanted to do something for yourself that wasn’t influenced by the Capitol’s hand? And I thought you were crazy and said no?” I say. “How is this any different?”

He says, more seriously, “And you also wanted to just remain friends. That’s what I want. I don’t want this to get more complicated than a friendship.”

“It already _is_ more complicated than a friendship,” I tell him. “I’m in your bed every night. It’ll be no different, except this time nobody will be trying to kick me out or tell us that we’re faking it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

“No,” he says, and it’s with enough finality that I know I have to back down. I afford him another long, hard look before I can’t stand it anymore and turn away.

My head buzzes, and I can barely think over the noise in my ears. My heart thumps heavily and quickly. Pitch is being unreasonable, and it’s not because he said no. If he really didn’t like me, fine. But I know he does, at least enough that he’s willing to spend so much time with me, risk rumors and insults, and allow me share his living space with him. What does it matter if we get a document that says that our relationship is official? Nothing will change from how it is now except that maybe people will leave us alone some.

I shouldn’t have gone with him to the mentor room. . . . I shouldn’t have rubbed it in people’s faces that I was there voluntarily when so many of them can’t get the break they so desperately needed. And now because of that, I’m going to have to what, not hang out with Pitch? When I came to the Capitol, it was to keep Pitch company, and now I’m failing in that regard.

“Alright,” I say at last. “After dinner, I’ll go back to my apartment.”

He sighs. “I don’t think you have to just vanish like that,” he says. “You can spend the nights here. Maybe go back to your apartment during the day so that people don’t see you around the Training Center quite as much.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say. “But I should make sure my apartment is habitable anyhow.”

Pitch opens his mouth to speak but closes it again a moment later. The two of us sit in awkward silence for another few minutes until Daphne raps on the door and tells us that it’s time for dinner.


	17. Chapter 17

My apartment is inhabitable, but it has no food.

Oh well.

I curl up in bed and try not to feel the void where Pitch used to lay. As the hours drag on, I know that I’m being unreasonable and that I shouldn’t have launched myself out of the Training Center the first chance I got. But I did, and I’m not going to get out of bed and go back right now anyhow, so I close my eyes and eventually force myself to fall asleep by pretending that Pitch will be back any moment.

The apartment still lacks food in the morning. I don’t know why this surprises me. But as I stare at the empty cupboards, I wonder if I should even bother trying to get food sent here. The Capitol thirsts for rumors, and my sudden departure from the Training Center and subsequent residence in my personal accommodation may be interpreted as a big fight between Pitch and me which is totally not what either of us needs right now. So I take the opportunity to gather a few books before I head back to the Training Center.

They’re finishing up breakfast when I come in. _I should have timed this better_ , I think as everybody looks up at me in surprise.

“More books,” Pitch comments. He stands up and pushes in his chair. “Come on, I’ve cleared a spot for your library.”

I follow him towards the bedroom, and once we’re behind closed doors, he clears his throat. “You okay?”

I grunt and set the books down on the dresser where he has, indeed, prepared an area for my books. Not only that, but he has already set up—in alphabetical order—the books I left behind. I take in the sight of my novels lined up and neat, propped in place by thick green candles on stumps of aspen. I don’t know what to make of this, so I just start shoving the new books into their places, making sure to keep his organizational system intact.

Pitch waits until I’m finished before he says, “The tributes will be with their stylists and prep team members today. Daphne has no problem if we leave as long as we’re back by 4:00 PM. I’d like to spend the day with you, if you’re okay with that.”

I’m still a bit ticked off at Pitch. I don’t know if it’s because the other mentors don’t want me around (which I know isn’t his fault) or because he turned down my award-winning marriage proposal. I almost give in the anger seeping within me, but I fight my way through it so that I can at least get my head out of the trees long enough to see what’s around me. I’m here because of Pitch, and I’m not going to take it out on him when he actually needs me. So I turn around and look at him.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I say. “Where are we going?”

“Your choice,” he says.

“I literally know nowhere except for a random mountain, the riverwalk where we got assaulted by the press, a park where we were secretly assaulted by the press, and a nature trail where I beat up a mechanical deer,” I say to him.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll choose. Do you want something outdoors or would you prefer a place like a museum?”

“I thought you said you were going to choose,” I tell him.

“Okay, okay,” he says. He thinks about it for a moment. “I’m going to choose the fakest nature sort of place I can find.”

I roll my eyes at him, but smile slightly despite myself. “Asshole,” I mutter.

He grins, and leads me out of the room.

And then Pitch takes me to, of all places, a petting zoo.

Technically it’s an _actual_ zoo, but we end up in the petting zoo portion first and spend a good hour wandering around trying to get goats and chickens and one random long-necked animal he says is an alpaca to like us enough to let us actually pet them. We might be the only people over the age of five who aren’t keeping an eye on younger siblings or their own kids. I finally manage to befriend a pig by bribing it with food, but as soon as the food is gone, the pig abandons me for a toddler with a full cup of pig chow who he bullies into dumping it all on the ground.

We leave the petting zoo and wash our hands before heading into the rest of the zoo.

District 7 has a zoo, but it pales in comparison to this magnificent place. On one hand, I hate the idea of these animals being caged up, but on the other, I’m so overwhelmingly fascinated by these creatures I have only seen in books and the occasional documentary. Plus the cages are so expertly designed that you would never think that they were cages at all. As we’re watching lions sun themselves on a large rock, it occurs to me that they probably developed technology for the Hunger Games and realized that they could apply it elsewhere; how many arenas appeared to have no boundaries, and yet the tributes were still just as trapped?

“So is this amount of manufactured nature acceptable?” Pitch asks me as we idly wander past screaming birds of various colors.

“I’m undecided,” I tell him. “Whoever thought it would be great to put _those_ things into a cage and listen to them screech all day long?”

Pitch puts his arm around me and leads me away from the brightly-colored flapping wings, and we head towards an area that a sign promises to house bears.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he says to me as we walk slowly.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“I should have explained more. It’s just that—”

“Really, it’s okay,” I insist. But I’m wondering if it is. Anyway, I don’t want to have this conversation in front of everyone and end up ruining the day, so I busy myself with reading the map in my hands as a diversion.

Fortunately he takes the hint and drops it.

Excitement for the Hunger Games runs high, even in the zoo. Not, of course, from the animals; they don’t give a shit. But every now and again, people stop us to ask questions, or get autographs, or to take pictures. We try to stay in less-populated areas or to avoid larger groups when we see them around a bend in the road, but we can’t avoid them altogether.

Pitch works with the crowd surprisingly well. Maybe it’s his years of experience, or maybe because I know that what I told Quintus is true and I am socially awkward. Anyway, he can politely tell people to shut up in so few words that I’m jealous of his technique and try to commit it to memory even though I know I’d never be able to pull it off. In this manner, he successfully diffuses situations before I can get angry enough to burst, and he leads me away beneath giant palm fronds or behind storage sheds to calm down.

“It’s a pity that the Capitol has neat things to look at,” I mumble as we sit on a bench beneath a coniferous tree. “Because it’s also filled with people who are bound and determined not to let us enjoy them.”

“You’ll eventually figure it out,” Pitch tells me.

I roll my eyes. “They keep surprising me in new and unexpected ways,” I say.

“Eventually it starts getting repetitive enough that you’ll be able to anticipate whatever weird little ‘quirks’ they have,” he says. “Though they’ll always manage to throw something in there you’ll never expect.”

I hate them. I don’t care if I end up being a great diplomat; I will still hate them.

“Is it still okay if I come to the tribute interviews with you tonight?” I ask quietly.

“Of course,” he says. “Nobody can say that that has anything to do with mentoring.”

At least there’s that. When Pitch thinks I’m calm enough to keep moving, we stand up and meander down the trail, pausing occasionally to stop and look at animals. We see animals of every kind. Large and small; mammal, reptile, and bird; weird and normal. Our presence doesn’t bother them, and they go about their lives completely oblivious to the fact that we stand here talking about them and pointing out how strange they are and wondering where they came from. But then, I wonder, maybe they aren’t oblivious; maybe they know that we’re here to gawk at them and they have just found it easier to pretend that none of it exists. At what point did they come to that conclusion?

“I’d like to go back to the apartment,” I tell Pitch suddenly.

“Is everything okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m just wondering if these animals are having an existential crisis, that’s all,” I say, and Pitch asks nothing else as he leads me towards the exit.

We return to the apartment in plenty of time to take a nap before getting ready for the interviews, and then it’s the tedious process of putting myself together in a way that won’t make me look ugly for whatever cameras happen to glimpse across me while also not really caring too much what I look like. I’m grateful that they supplied me a decent variety of dresses in the closet so that I don’t have to go back to my apartment before every event to find an outfit. As I twist around to try to zip my dress from behind, I wonder if I could get away with wearing the exact same dress for every event. . . . Maybe it could be my special style.

“Keep your heads up and remember to look out into the audience,” Daphne is giving the tributes advice as Pitch and I enter the common area. “No, Sage, don’t look like they’re going to eat you alive.”

“But they might,” he mumbles.

Leander, his stylist, claps him on the shoulder. “You’re going to do just fine,” he reassures him.


	18. Chapter 18

Both tributes are mediocre in their interviews when compared to their competition. Not that either of them do anything _wrong_. It’s just that they have nothing that makes them stand out, which isn’t exactly a great thing, especially in Wisteria’s case because she received a high enough training score that she should have something to convince the Capitol that she’s worth their time and money. It’s not bad for Sage because his training score was low enough that he’d really have to pull off something special to get their attention tonight, and everybody knows that that wasn’t going to happen.

And both tributes are also well aware of how mediocre they are, even when their mentors, stylists, and escort try to assure them that they did just fine. Sage slinks after us up to the District 7 apartment, and Wisteria sulks until they’re dismissed to go to their rooms and change into something more comfortable.

“It wasn’t bad,” Daphne tries to assure the mentors as we sit at the dining room table waiting for the tributes to return for dinner. Not a single one of us has bothered to change into comfortable clothes ourselves, like we’ve all resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing comfortable is happening that would warrant the need. “It’s just that some of those kids are very comfortable on stage and it shows.”

“Some of them have had speech lessons, and it shows,” Elm mutters.

“Neither of the District 7 tributes threw up, so that’s kind of a win,” I suggest.

Pitch gives me such an uncharacteristic glare that it almost, _almost_ makes me laugh. I hold it inside and keep a straight face.

“Well, what’s done is done,” the escort says. “No use wasting time worrying about it.”

But I don’t know if either mentor is really _worrying_ about the interview as much as they are focusing on what happens tomorrow. The tributes will be off on their own, and neither mentor will be able to do much more than send occasional supplies if they get lucky enough to have sponsors. I find Pitch’s hand under the table and entwine my fingers in his. He gives me a small squeeze.

“Were we that bad?” Wisteria stands at the end of the hallway. She hasn’t bothered to scrub the ridiculous amounts of makeup off her face or untwist the curls from her hair. Instead she swapped out her dress for a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and now she glares at the lot of us as though it were our fault that her performance was so unremarkable.

“No, you were fine,” Elm says.

She doesn’t believe it. I can see it in her eyes despite the heavy makeup caked onto her lids. But she doesn’t try to argue with him or insult him for lying to her. Instead she comes over to the table and sits down in her seat.

Daphne engages us in polite conversation that we take turns participating in so that no one person has to bear the brunt of the discussion. Finally the dialogue ends when Sage appears and sits down. His large eyes shift between us like he’s afraid he’s done something wrong by being the last person to the table. The avoxes bring out the food, and the final meal with all of this year’s inhabitants of the District 7 apartment commences. It’s a sober affair, and no one has much to say, if anything at all.

“You have to be awake early tomorrow,” Pitch says to the tributes as we finish up the meal. “With that in mind, what would you like to do tonight? More mentoring or do you need a break?”

I guess that’s a polite way to say that they can choose what to do on their final evening alive. I flick at the tines of my fork to try to keep out of the way of this discussion.

“I know I’m going to die,” Wisteria says suddenly. She keeps her eyes on the table except for a brief glance towards Elm and then Pitch. “So I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. Okay?”

She doesn’t wait for either of them to respond before she stands up and leaves the room. From down the hallway, her bedroom door slams shut.

Silence lingers after that bittersweet apology.

“I’d like to see if I can flood my bathroom by overfilling the shower,” Sage says. Everyone looks at him in confusion and he averts his eyes and shrugs. “There’s no overflow hole, so I just wanted to see what would happen if I plugged the drain.”

“Go for it,” Pitch says. “Just remember that you have to use it until you leave tomorrow morning.”

Sage nods. “Thanks,” he says before he stands up and heads down the hallway.

Daphne blinks at us. Pitch shrugs. “Tributes ask for weird things,” he says. Then he glances over at me. “Or they just break everything in the apartment they can find.”

Elm chuckles, likely remember what an unholy terror I was.

“Sometimes you just have to,” I say. “But now I’m going to have to figure out what happens when the drain in the shower is plugged.”

“Absolutely not,” Pitch says. “We still have to use that bathroom.”

 _We_. I guess that means that I’m back in, which is a relief because I wasn’t looking forward to spending tonight by myself in my apartment.

I head off to take a shower (with a promise to Pitch that I won’t try to flood anything). I keep my time in the bathroom brief because I have the sudden sensation that I don’t want to be alone. The uneasiness from the evening settles, and it starts to sink in that hell begins tomorrow. I might not have a tribute, but it doesn’t matter because I know them both and want neither of them to suffer or die. Within twenty-four hours, their lives might be snuffed out entirely.

Pitch joins me in bed and I turn off the light without even making a pretense of reading.

“Tomorrow I’m going to go to the mentoring room early,” he says. “I don’t think it would be a good idea if you went, so stay here and try to get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. I don’t normally like being left behind, but knowing that somebody had complained makes me rethink wanting to tag along with Pitch. And even if no one had said anything at all, my recent trip to the mentor room made me realize how awkward it is to be there when you don’t have a tribute to mentor and everybody else does.

“I’ll be back to get ready to go to the bloodbath party, and then after that, I’ll swing by here again,” he says.

“Pitch, I’m going to the party, too,” I say.

“No, that’s not necessary,” he says. “You’re not mentoring, so you’re not required to go.”

“Um, maybe, but I was planning on going with you, and then Quintus also expects me there.”

Pitch lets out a breath. If there’s one argument I can make that he can’t object to, it’s that. He frowns as he thinks about it. But no, there is no way to keep me home from the bloodbath party that would allow me to walk away unscathed.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, but I know that he’ll be worrying plenty. “I’ll be fine. Just focus on your tribute.”

In the darkness of the room, I can see that he still doesn’t buy it. But he can’t worry about me and his tribute; it’s too much and it’ll pull him apart. So I stretch my arm around him and hold him. The tension in his shoulders slowly relaxes, and I listen to his breathing grow even.

A beeping alarm wakes me up, and I blink in the darkness. Pitch groans and slaps the alarm clock. The beeping stops. He shuffles around in bed. When he sees me stirring, he says, “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.” And then his warmth leaves the bed.


	19. Chapter 19

Nobody likes bloodbath parties.

Correction: nobody with any sort of human-like qualities likes bloodbath parties.

The Capitol citizens, of course, lack all basic human decencies and therefore revel in the death and misery of others. I have yet to figure out if they see us victors as not being capable of having emotions, or if they just don’t care that they’re shoving the death of our fellow district residents into our faces. Music, lights, and laughing people all pour out of the mansion as though those massive walls can’t contain all of the chaos within. I move closer towards Pitch and hold his hand tightly; putting on a brave face and pretending that this doesn’t bother me in the slightest doesn’t come naturally to me, and I struggle to maintain my composure.

Within thirty seconds of pushing our way into the party, Quintus whisks me away from Pitch. He pretends to be polite and asks Pitch if he can steal me from him (and what can Pitch say but “Yes, of course.”?) but we both know that he’s been perched by the door waiting for my arrival.

“You look lovely this morning,” Quintus tells me as he leads me through the packed hallways. I murmur a polite “thank you,” and go back to trying to distract myself with the hordes of colorful people I’d like to punch in their smarmy faces if I ever got the chance to do it.

Quintus puts his arm around my waist as though he fears I’ll fall behind, lost in the sea of people. He smells vaguely like perfume. Not cologne. I try to not gag on the scent, faint though it is.

We stop every now and again for him to greet people, and he introduces me to them all, but I don’t care one bit about their names or faces or titles or children or anything. They’re meaningless. But at last we find our way to a private suite; his own place to watch the Hunger Games uninterrupted. This time, however, there is no one here but the two of us.

My heart thumps and I take a deep breath. Quintus leads me over to a couch and we sit down. He puts his arm around my shoulders.

The clock on the television screen counts down the time until it begins. We have another 8 minutes and 43 seconds, and all I can think is that I shouldn’t be here with Quintus but in the main room with Pitch.

To my relief, we don’t remain alone for long. A group of four people, all a little tipsy but still definitely coherent enough to know what’s going on, laugh between themselves as they enter. The moment they see me, their eyes light up.

“Quintus, is this the friend you promised us?” one of them nearly shouts as she runs over and grabs up my hands in hers. “Oh, love, it’s so great to finally meet you. Your Hunger Games was one of the most remarkable ones I’ve seen.”

The smile I plaster on my lips doesn’t reach my eyes and I don’t care that I can’t force myself to be more excited to meet this heartless woman. The other three from the group come over and Quintus introduces us all. Once more, I don’t care, and I don’t make a pretense of caring. An avox comes in, and the momentary distraction with alcohol and finger food takes the spotlight off of me. Once everybody has the food and drink they desire, they seem to forget that I’m there at all. They’ve given me a drink, but I lean forward and set it on the table in front of me, not caring that it might be impolite. Right now, I just have to focus on being decent towards Quintus, and that takes all my energy.

He rubs my arm with his free hand.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say.

He frowns. “You don’t seem nearly excited enough,” he chides me.

“Probably because we’re about to watch a bunch of kids get slaughtered in real time,” I tell him.

He tut-tuts at me. “Appreciate it for its beauty, if nothing else, Juniper,” he tells me. I have no clue what the hell that’s supposed to mean.

“Who do you have money on?” I ask him.

“No one yet,” he admits. “I want to see how they perform.”

“I thought everybody put money on tributes beforehand,” I say. “Clearly I don’t understand how this works.”

He smiles. “We can financially back tributes at any time,” he explains to me. His eyes lock onto my face as he moves his hand from my arm and runs it along my jawline. “Many people enjoy the thrill of the bloodbath, so they start early. But I am more conservative. I find my thrill in other places, so I only put money on the most worthwhile tributes.”

I suppose I wouldn’t be too far off if his “thrill” involved pursuing victors like myself and Pitch.

Squeals of excitement from the others in the suite interrupt the moment. Quintus’ eyes linger on me for a moment more before he turns away to the television. Only seconds remain until the arena is revealed.

And then it begins.

The camera pans around the Cornucopia, showing a wealth of supplies pouring forth from the great golden horn onto black, crusty ground. Tufts of grass sprout from the rocky surface, but it does little to break up the dark terrain. Moments later, we see the first glimpses of the tributes as they rise up on great disks. The camera shows us all twenty-four tributes before the screen splits and we get longer focus on individual tributes, each with their name and district number displayed beneath.

Most of the tributes make good use of their time, either focusing on the supplies to see what they’re willing to risk their lives to obtain, or surveying their environment. A few can barely hold themselves together: one has his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth moves like he’s praying; another cries so hard that she must barely be able to see; a third is crouched over in a ball.

Time ticks away. Thirty seconds. Fifteen. Ten. I get a glimpse of Wisteria who has wiped her face of any emotion she feels inside. Five. Sage trembles visibly, but he licks his lips and focuses on supplies a few dozen feet in front of him. Four. Three. Two. One.

The gong goes off, and tributes shoot off their pedestals and onto the hard, black ground. Both District 7 tributes rush forward to grab supplies, daring to run farther into the center than many of the others. But the Careers run faster. They cover ground in a flash, and the first one—the District 2 female—reaches the Cornucopia before either of the District 7 tributes reach their desired supplies half the distance to the horn. The first cries of pain piece the air moments later. I jump, the sound bringing me back to the arena myself, and Quintus’ arm tightens around my shoulder. The fate of the District 7 tributes pulls me in, and I barely care about the unwanted intrusion into my personal space.

Wisteria grabs up a bag and a hammer. Before she has time to contemplate taking anything else, she turns on her heel and bolts out of the Cornucopia.

The camera turns away to focus on the kids getting killed: the District 6 male dies first after a few whacks with the District 2 girl’s sword. The District 10 female follows shortly thereafter when the District 4 male throws a spear into her chest. One after another after another. The District 1 girl has chosen one of the most brutal of weapons, and with her heavy mace she pulverizes the District 3 girl and the District 10 boy. It’s disgusting, and I almost can’t watch as their bodies break and warp under the glistening iron.

The camera turns to Sage: he grabs what he needs and then hesitates just long enough that he draws the District 4 girl’s attention. Sage looks up just in time to see her running closer to him, and he knows that he won’t be able to escape. Fear blankets his expression, but then he grabs up a small sword from the ground, turns around, and slashes it into the District 11 female as she runs by. The girl cries out, but one more blow and she falls to the ground.

I watch, mouth agape, as Sage turns around and stabs the District 9 female in the stomach when she leans over to grab a small bag nearby.

The District 4 girl stares at Sage for a second and he stares right back. Then she turns and heads off after the District 9 boy who has dared to grab a bag close to her.

Sage abandons the sword in the still-alive District 9 girl, and grabs a second bag before heading out of the Cornucopia.

The District 1 male finishes off the District 9 female which means that the kill is “counted” for him.

Very few non-Career tributes remain, but the District 2 male kills the District 5 girl, and the District 2 female kills the District 11 male.

The bloodbath ends with panting, sweating, blood-covered Careers giving each other high-fives and preening over their “success” while nine other tributes lay dead across the dark ground. Cannon fire pounds through the speakers, each blast signifying the death of a tribute.

Immediately the voices of Janice Lovely and Caligula Klora fill our ears as they express their excitement for the bloodbath results.

Quintus squeezes me, which pulls me into the present.

“Pitch’s tribute is one to keep an eye on, isn’t he?” he says to me. “That was quite the surprise.”

Yes. Yes it was. I wonder if Pitch knew what would happen and if it was something they planned. _Doubtful_ , I think. _Sage was so doe-eyed and scared . . . there was no way that he could have planned that._ Or maybe it was part of his strategy?

I’ll have to ask Pitch later.

The bloodbath happened so quickly. Nine kids dead, just like that. And those Careers. . . . I can’t help but watch the way they laugh with each other as they go about their business choosing their supplies and trying out various weapons. Anger pulsates within me, and I force myself to suppress it so I can get through this damned party unscathed.

“You’re shaking,” Quintus says with concern.

“Oh, um, yeah,” I answer stupidly. “I guess.”

“Too much excitement?” he asks. Ugh. I want to punch this man. And vomit on him. First one, then the other. “Perhaps you’d like a drink? Something a little different than before?” He glances briefly at the drink I abandoned on the table.

“No, again, I’m not old enough yet,” I say sharply. “And obviously they put those rules in place for a reason.” (Which makes a very convenient excuse when in a position such as mine.)

“Juniper, could you at least try to enjoy yourself?” he asks.

I stare at him with annoyance. “If you wanted somebody who was really good at pretending to enjoy things she doesn’t like, then you would have chosen someone else,” I say.

A hint of a smile plays on the corner of his lips, and he takes a sip of his drink.

“It’s not for me,” he says when he lowers the glass. “I don’t care if you hate the bloodbath. But there are others here who may not share my thoughts on this matter.”

I don’t respond to this as a deep cold sinks into me. Of course Quintus isn’t the only person to whom I have to answer in one manner or the other, but the thought that he wants me to put on a façade for others makes me wonder if somebody else out there might have far more power than he does.

“Of course,” I say carefully. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” he says. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Something . . . green?” I try.

He beckons an avox over and when there’s nothing green on the tray, he turns her away and tells her to get something with a little more color.

The others in the room talk between each other, and on occasion they ask Quintus questions about his thoughts on the whole matter. Nobody cares that I hate them all and that I don’t want to be here, but I try to honor Quintus’ request by at least pretending that I want to be here with them, or at least not show that I’d rather gut them and hang their entrails from the balcony than be forced to endure their presence for a moment longer. When the avox comes back with the drink, I take it from her with a “thank you” and hold it carefully on my lap between both hands. After a few seconds’ thought, I lift the drink to my lips and take the smallest of sips. And, to my irritation, it actually tastes good, and not at all like alcohol. A very dangerous beverage.

My attempts to maintain status quo, meager as I’m sure they appear, seem to appease Quintus who doesn’t make further comment. Instead he’s listening to a woman with a pointy hat and a man who’s eyebrows are twice the length of what they should be discuss heatedly about which Career was their favorite. The woman gushes over the District 2 girl, Valora, while the man says that the District 1 girl, Europa, will no doubt be the winner. They both have valid points, if you think that there is anything valid in murdering one’s peers.

As they talk, my attention shifts back to the TV where they cease the instant-replays of the bloodbath and turn to showing the arena itself. The camera shows wide swaths of black, burnt ground, and I realize that it’s supposed to be some sort of volcanic landscape. Rivers of belching red-orange lava gush across the barren land. Chimney-like structures splash out liquid fire. Eventually the stark, black terrain gives way to lush greenery. (It would be a very boring Hunger Games if there was no cover, after all.) If different parts of the arena exist, the gamemakers don’t show us right away; those areas will be revealed when the tributes find them on their own. Such a contrast to the high walkways through the fog-shrouded forests from last year. Though, of course, that is also intentional because too similar of arenas would bore the audience.

After they show more of the arena and the announcer and interviewer chat about what this might bring for the tributes, they show us glimpses of the tributes remaining. Wisteria has joined up with the pair from District 12, and the three of them slowly plod through the vegetation to put as much distance between themselves as possible. Sage remains by himself, his face completely blank and no longer displaying the fear that shaped his features over the past week.

“I just can’t believe how brave that boy is,” one man says as they show Sage with one backpack on each shoulder and no weapon at all. “What a splendid job he did in the bloodbath.”

Like it’s all just some fucking show.

“I’m going to barf,” I announce before I push my glass of alcohol into Quintus (who manages to grab it before it spills everywhere) and jump to my feet. I leave the suite without a second thought and plunge into the hallway. I find an unlocked bathroom occupied by a couple making out and I stomp right in and say, “Move it. I’m going to puke whether you’re here or not.”

The couple looks confused, but I brush past them and grab up the toilet lid, and they take the hint. As soon as they’re gone, I throw the door closed and lock myself away from the rest of the party.

I only have a few minutes, I know; I have just managed to buy myself a bit of time to try to get myself under control. I pace back and forth and order myself to stop freaking out, but it’s doing nothing. In fact, it’s probably making things worse. But I don’t know what else to do. I’m slipping, and there’s no way I can catch myself before I fall. If I try to go back in there with those monsters, I’ll end up freaking out on them. But I have to. I _have to_. I don’t have a choice. I can’t sneak away and hide behind Pitch. I need to rejoin Quintus and pretend that I’m really having a really damned good time in this fucked up paradise of theirs.

. . . Where they place bets on us, and taunt us, and watch us die, and root for murder, and drink in excess, and—

My fist slams into the mirror, shattering it into a thousand jagged pieces. For the briefest of moments, I watch as the light catches them in the perfect way that it looks beautiful. And then they crash to the counter in pure cacophony.

It’s not enough.

I punch again, and then I grab the mirror off the wall entirely and heave it towards the shower where it crashes and the last pieces of glass still clinging to the oval frame fall into the gleaming white tub. I stomp over, grab the mirror again, and bring it down on the edge of the tub. Blood spatters across the white ceramic basin and neutral tiles behind it, and I briefly catch a glimpse of my own fist dripping red down my fingers.

Despite the anger that still courses through me, I know that I have to get back to Quintus before I run out of time and condemn everybody I know and love to unexpected death. But I haven’t worked the anger out of my system enough to think clearly. I run my hand under the water but my skin won’t stop bleeding. The glass has left a ragged cut across the back of my hand from knuckle to wrist. I need to clean up. Somehow.

Fuck it, I don’t care.

I grab an off-white hand towel, wrap it around my hand, and stomp back towards the suite. Once there, I throw myself onto the sofa next to Quintus and try to ignore his irritated stare. Instead I face the television and glare at it with all the energy I can muster.

Quintus takes my hand, and I almost rip it away, but the last vestige of sanity makes me hesitate. And then I realize that he is hiding my hand from the others so that they don’t see it when they turn away from the television to chatter about everything that’s going on. I’d appreciate it if I didn’t hate him so much and the mere thought of him touching my skin didn’t make me shiver in revulsion.

“Juniper, you look so pale,” somebody comments.

“It’s the drink,” I say. “Made me sick.”

I receive sympathetic noises and a few throw-away remarks in return, but I focus on the television instead of pretending to care about them.

“Alright,” Quintus says after a few minutes. “I don’t suppose any of you would be against me kicking you out of the suite, would you?”

They all say that no, that wouldn’t be a problem at all. One of them winks at me and I stare unflinching right back.

Quintus stands up to close the door after them, and when he returns to me, his beautiful face holds nothing but anger.

“You’re a fool,” he says to me as he grabs me by the wrist and unties the blood-soaked towel. “How do you plan on getting out of the party with _this_?”

“If I had been thinking rationally, then I probably wouldn’t have broken a mirror to begin with,” I snap. Blood rolls down my wrist from the open wound and pools against Quintus’ fingers.

“Come,” he says, and he gives my arm a tug. I stand up and stagger after him as he drags me to the bathroom in the suite. He thrusts my hand in the sink but doesn’t turn on the water as he begins to throw open cupboards and drawers. He pulls out bandage material, and then he turns on the faucet and starts to scrub my hand despite my protests. He dries it off and then begins packing bandage material on it and wrapping it before it can start gushing more blood.

Once he finishes up, the bathroom is in complete disarray, mostly from the drops of bright red blood on the counter, the sink, the floor. I glance towards the sitting room and can follow the trail of blood to the sofa. Yes, this is not an ideal situation.

To avoid looking at Quintus, I grab toilet paper and begin to wipe up the blood from the counter. It smears across the marble, and I reach over to grab more paper when Quintus clears his throat.

“There are avoxes who will take care of that,” he says.

I glare at him. “Yeah, and how does the blood get explained?”

“It doesn’t need to be,” he answers. Right. Wealth and power are enough to whisk away any questions. He pauses to wash his hand, and I watch the blood swirl down the sink before the water runs clear again. He dries his hands on a fresh towel. “We can go back to my place and I will get you a doctor.”

“I’m fine,” I state, allowing anger at the thought of needing help overwhelm the fear that jolts through me.

“Yes, of course,” he says, and I think I catch bitterness in his words. “Then I will turn you over to Pitch and let him deal with you.”

I don’t like the way he says that, so I remain quiet because I’m terrified that I might be getting myself into bigger problems right now. Will going home with Pitch mean that I’m putting my family in danger? I swallow hard and force myself to be calm enough to make a decision.

“I’ll go with you,” I find myself saying. “Pitch isn’t my babysitter.”

“You are incredibly stubborn,” he says. But despite that, he considers his own decision in silence, as he tries to decide whether to take me back to his home. At last he grabs up my hand and says, “Pitch will likely have more experience in dealing with this. But until the last few minutes there, I did enjoy our time together, and I look forward to spending more time with you.”

“Okay,” I say, holding onto the pain in my hand so that I don’t betray my relief.

“You’re a strange girl, Juniper,” he says. “I will call you when the schedule works out. Keep your phone on you.”

Following my victory, I received a Capitol-appointed cell phone, but most of the time it remains buried in some closet or another. I think for a moment to make sure that I brought it to the Capitol with me this time, and I recall that it ended up in the bottom of Pitch’s wardrobe.

I nod, and Quintus releases my hand. “Come, then,” he says, and he leads me out of the bathroom, through the suite, and into the hallway.

The crowd has begun to disperse now that we have a lull in the excitement of the Hunger Games. I don’t know what’s actually going on, but I assume that the Careers are making plans to hunt tributes, while the other tributes put as much distance between themselves and the Careers as possible. Enough people still linger about, watching television and chatting with friends and acquaintances that it’s clear the party is far from being over, but at least it is socially acceptable to leave now. I see Pitch talking with a man near a couch, both of them standing up as though they were planning on leaving, and his eyes dart about until they lock onto me. The briefest flicker of relief passes across his expression before he focuses back on his conversation.

“Well, um, thanks for the invite to the VIP suite,” I say to Quintus.

As an answer Quintus pulls me closer and kisses me. I barely make it through without throttling him. When he releases me, I give him a grimace-smile and head off to Pitch who immediately excuses himself from the conversation and ushers me towards the door.


	20. Chapter 20

“What happened to your hand?” Pitch asks me as soon as we’re in the cab.

“Mirror attacked me,” I say.

Pitch rolls his eyes. “Juniper. . . .”

“Spare me,” I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it.”

I lean my head on his shoulder, and he ever-so-carefully lifts up my hand and turns it over to examine the bandage.

“I’ll drop you back at the Training Center,” he says. “I have to go to another party—”

“I’m going with you,” I say before he can get the words out of his mouth.

“I think you’ve had enough fun for today,” he says.

I sit up straight. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the monitoring device attached to his wrist, partially hidden beneath the sleeve of his jacket. A cold reminder of his duties and the reason he has to keep attending these parties. I meet his eyes.

“I am going with you.”

“Are you going to punch more mirrors if I say no?” he asks. I don’t respond to that, but I also don’t look away. “Alright. We will go to the party together.”

An easy win, I realize, as I sit back in the seat and rest my head against his shoulder again. I close my eyes and focus on being here, with Pitch, in this in-between world where we transition from one nightmare to another. But it’s a brief break, enough relaxation to remind you that a world exists outside of the horrors we’re forced to endure. When Pitch nudges me up to tell me that we’re here, I realize that I must’ve fallen asleep.

Pitch holds my non-injured hand as we walk up the sidewalk towards another enormous mansion. But despite the size, there doesn’t appear to be nearly as many guests here. When we reach the front door, it opens to reveal a sizeable gathering of excited and chattering people who sweep us inside and surround us with their enthusiasm. Avoxes offer us drinks and appetizers, but we politely decline and continue to weave our way through the throng of Capitol citizens.

“Pitch and Juniper!” says a middle-aged (maybe?) woman in greeting. She hugs us—first Pitch, then me—and gives us each a kiss on the cheek. Pitch must know her, and as soon as she hugs me and I feel her hand on my ass I realize that it’s probably not a mutually-appreciated relationship. Her fingers linger there for a long moment before she moves away. “I’m so excited to meet you, Juniper! Pitch has told me all about you.”

I look up wide-eyed at Pitch.

“This is Martha,” Pitch says. “Martha, I know you already are familiar with Juniper. . . .”

Martha, right. The woman with the terrible perfume.

“Yes, of course,” she says, her large eyelashes fluttering as she looks down at me. “You two make such a cute couple.”

The woman who told Pitch that he wasn’t attentive enough to her emotional needs when _he_ was struggling after losing our tributes.

“Your tribute has done spectacular, Pitch,” she says.

He smiles at her. How can he still _smile_ at her? The disgusting witch that she is.

My heart rate rises. My breathing quickens.

Pitch’s hand tightens in mine.

“Juniper. Pitch. There you are.” I turn to see Daphne walking towards us. She wears a hideous orange suit over her thick, muscular frame. When she sees who we’re talking to, she apologizes for interrupting.

“Oh, not at all, my girl,” says Martha. She pats Daphne on the cheek delicately so that she doesn’t scratch the escort with her long red nails. “I was just saying hello. I don’t want to interfere with your important business.” She smiles at Daphne, then at Pitch and me, and then she disappears into the crowd.

Daphne stares after her retreating frame before she turns to us.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Pitch says to her.

She shrugs. “Just schmoozing with the elite,” she says casually. Then she wanders off towards a television without saying another word or even bothering to explain what she had wanted to begin with.

Pitch and I exchange a look before we head over towards a vacant couch with a large television in front of it. We take a seat on the smooth leather and turn our attention to the screen. I yearn to ask Pitch about Sage, but I know that now’s not the time or place and I’ll have to be patient. Right now, the television shows him huffing along as he picks across an open expanse of smooth black rock. At some point, he ditched one of the backpacks; he most likely consolidated the belongings into one bag to give him more mobility. Pitch looks down at his monitoring device and skims through it as he assesses his tribute’s stats and inventory.

The screen switches between various tributes, and it’s only after a few skips between alliances that I realize somebody in this room has the ability to control what we see on television. I twist around enough to see a young girl of about eight or nine holding a remote control. She looks like a miniature adult: fancy sequined dress, long gloves to her elbows with small flares around the wrists, false eyelashes, and a disgusting amount of glittery makeup.

When the girl sees me looking at her, she smiles and comes around to the front of the couch.

“I can see any tribute I want with this,” she says as she holds up the remote. “Which one do you want to watch?”

“Um, you choose,” I tell her.

She purses her lips as she stares at the remote, and then she points the device at the screen and presses a button to show the Career pack. Ugh, I should have said anybody but them. The Careers divide themselves into two groups: half stay at the Cornucopia and the other half go out on a hunting raid to see if they can find nearby tributes. The girls from Districts 1 and 2 take charge of each group, and District 1 leads her group out across the black landscape and into the forest.

“She’s so pretty,” the girl breathes as the camera focuses on the District 1 girl’s face.

I can’t even pretend to say something to this kid right now.

The girl turns to me. “My name is Neptune,” she says. “I know who you are. You’re Juniper, and you’re Pitch. And you’re both from District 7. I’m from the Capitol.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Neptune,” Pitch says. “That’s an interesting name you have.”

“Thanks,” she smiles. And then she pumps her fist into the air and cries out, “I was named after the god of the sea!”

I raise my eyebrows at her. She laughs, “Just kidding, I was named after a planet. My brother says that I should have been named Uranus.”

I snort out a laugh. The girl giggles at my response.

“Most grown-ups don’t find that funny,” she says as she plops down on the coffee table between us and the television. “You’re a different sort of grown-up, though.”

“Yeah, I don’t really think of myself as a grown-up,” I tell her. “Speaking of, what are you doing at a party like this?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, cocking her head to the side. “I always party.”

“Right. You’re like five,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m eight,” she says. “And I happen to like the Hunger Games, so _obviously_ I would be at this party.”

 _Obviously_. Obviously I don’t know anything about the Capitol if they let kids come to the parties like this. All sorts of inappropriate behavior and discussions happen at these sorts of parties. Does she notice the debauchery? The intoxication? Does she think that it’s completely normal to grab a victor’s ass in greeting? Or do those sorts of details go above their heads at this age?

“Who are you with?” Pitch asks.

“My parents,” she says. “But they’re _so_ boring, so I decided to come find someone else to talk to.”

“We’re pretty boring, too,” I say.

“I’ll say,” she says. “You haven’t even asked me who my favorite tribute is.”

My stomach lurches. Just a simple conversation in the world of this Capitol kid. She clearly doesn’t understand what actually happens when a knife goes into the thorax of a tribute. Or maybe she does and she just doesn’t care.

Pitch humors her: “Who is your favorite tribute?”

She smiles and sighs as though she’s been waiting for somebody to ask her this. Then she twists around enough so that she can point with the remote control at the television.

“I like her,” she says.

The District 1 girl. Of course. She’s pretty, she’s strong, and she wields a weapon that not many tributes—Careers or otherwise—have the ability to handle. I remembered how she fawned over the attention she received at the reaping. If she wins, she will fit in so well here in the Capitol. How disgusting.

We don’t have to wait too long before Neptune’s favorite tribute has a moment of action when she, the District 2 male, and the District 4 female find the District 3 boy huddled up going through his bag of supplies. Her shadow falls across the boy, and he looks up just in time to see the mace swing down towards his head. With one powerful _crack!_ , his brains are splattered across the rocks and the cannon fires.

Neptune cheers, and her cries are echoed by others throughout the party.

I stare slack-jawed at the little girl. She turns to us in excitement.

“Did you see that?!” she yells.

Yes, I saw that. I saw that fifteen-year-old kid got his head plastered to the lava rocks beneath him. And I saw the eight-year-old girl in front of me whoop with joy because of it.

I cling to Pitch’s arm with my free hand. My fingers dig into the sleeve of his jacket. I barely swallow back the vomit that rises in my throat.

Pitch releases my hand to wrap his arm around me and pull me against him. I lean into his body as though I am merely appreciating being with him and not cowering in fear/disgust/hatred/panic. We both know that no matter what, we need to hang on and pretend that we’re functional.

“That’s three kills she’s made so far!” Neptune exclaims.

What moments ago was a tolerable child has now turned into a terrible little beast whose presence I want none of. I wish that Pitch and I could leave. I find his free hand and hold onto it with both of mine. We listen to the announcers exclaim and marvel at the District 1 girl’s ability to handle that weapon, and they show a replay of the kill. I force myself to not turn away. Pitch’s heart beats quickly. Loudly. I try to focus on it and tune out the television.

“She’s just _so pretty_ ,” the Capitolite child breathes as she stares at the screen. And there stands the District 1 girl with flecks of blood and debris on her skin; her hazel eyes thirst for more.

How long before this Career pack decimates the rest of the tributes? They’re more ambitious than last year’s pack who didn’t dare venture away from the Cornucopia until it was mandatory. Their conservative approach didn’t match stereotypical Career mindset, and this year’s group won’t follow the same tactic.

“Neptune, do you think that we could see my tribute for a bit?” Pitch asks kindly.

The girl doesn’t respond for a moment since her eyes are glued on the Careers, but then she lifts the remote and presses a button so that the television returns to Sage trekking across the arena. We catch him just as he reaches a river of red-orange lava with no visible way of crossing. Sage sighs heavily before he starts to follow the river downstream.

“I like this arena,” the girl says. “I wonder what happens if somebody falls into the lava.”

“They die,” I snap.

Pitch tightens his arm around me. He presses his lips against my temple and says, “Hold on. Just a few more minutes.”

My eyes are locked on the television, and I try to relax my expression. I must do it well enough because when Neptune looks at us, she makes a barfing noise, turns back to the TV and flips to the Careers who have resumed their hunt. Pitch and I sit here unmoving as time ticks by. Occasionally Neptune moves to other tributes when the Careers get “boring,” but she flips right back to make sure she misses nothing.

“Is it socially acceptable to leave?” I ask Pitch when her older brother comes over, and the two of them start bickering about which Career is the best.

“Yes, definitely,” he replies. He stands up and helps me to my feet. Then he says goodbye to Neptune and her brother (who is probably a couple years older, but we were never introduced and I don’t care). The girl smiles and waves goodbye, but is immediately distracted when her brother steals the remote control.

Pitch and I ride back to the Training Center in silence. I want to yell and scream and curse and cry, but I can’t. Pitch acts like he wants to say something, but instead he only sits there throwing the occasional uneasy glance towards me. Finally we climb out of the cab and head into the building. As soon as we get to the District 7 apartment, I start breaking everything I can get my hands on, and Pitch goes to the bedroom to change into something to wear down to the mentoring room.


	21. Chapter 21

The first day of the Hunger Games drags on. I hate watching it without Pitch, but I know his duty is to Sage and not to me. Anyway, I’d still hate watching it if Pitch were present, so it’s not like having him here would magically change anything except that I wouldn’t be alone. So instead I lay on the couch with my book abandoned next to me and stare dumbly at the glowing television screen. Nothing of great interest happens. Sage continues to walk by the lava river. Wisteria and her District 12 allies try to set snares (and fail). The Careers return to the Cornucopia to regroup. And because nothing’s happening, I’m forced to watch replays of the bloodbath.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

Daphne walks in and finds me sprawled out across the cushions, my eyes glazed over. “I just returned for some paperwork I left behind,” she tells me, and then when I can only manage a grunt to acknowledge that I heard her, she adds, “Try channel thirty-five.”

I don’t have the energy to move, nor do I want another new perspective of this morning’s festivities, so I only blink at the screen. Daphne eventually gives up and leaves.

Pitch returns around what would probably be dinner time if we were normal people in a normal world. He, too, finds me on the couch, but instead of telling me what station would be most likely to show everybody dying in the best detail, he turns off the television outright. The silence that remains overwhelms me, but I manage to twist around enough to look up at him.

“I need a break, and it looks like you do, too,” he says to me. “I was planning on going to appreciate Capitol nature. . . . Do you care to accompany me?”

I find the strength within me to roll off the couch and flop to the floor. From there I push myself into a sitting position. Pitch leans down and grabs my arm and helps me to my feet.

“Breaking shit is exhausting,” I say to him as he releases me. He gives me a wry smile and the two of us head out the door.

To my surprise, he takes me to a decent park on the outskirts of the city. Most people stay home glued to their television, but we aren’t the only folks who need a breath air after a day of death. Pitch leads me over to a bench framed by large deciduous trees and we sit down. In this corner of the world, we have an iota of privacy, and I allow myself to focus on the cool evening breeze rustling the leaves around us and the way the occasional gust plays with my hair.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day,” Pitch starts after a few minutes. He shifts in his seat. “And I think you’re right. Let’s get married.”

I don’t answer right away. When I made the suggestion, I was angry; it was a spontaneous idea that I ran with. Now when Pitch says it, it seems more real and less of a novelty. Suddenly it becomes a grave decision not to be taken lightly. But I also know that I suggested it for a reason. I’m tired of being jerked about by everybody who thinks they can tell us how to live our lives because they assume something or another about our relationship. I know that it’s not a foolproof plan or a guarantee that we’ll be left alone, but at least . . . I don’t know. As stupid as it sound, at least I’ll have Pitch, whatever happens. I stare out into the fading light at the figures milling around the park.

“Yeah, okay,” I answer.

He rubs his forehead as he thinks about his next words. “You’ll have to share me,” he finally says.

“Only physically,” I tell him.

“And I can’t have kids.”

“I don’t want kids.”

“It’s not going to protect you—either of us—from have other relationships.”

“I know.”

“You sure you want this?” he asks.

“Yep.”

I listen to the wind. The trees. The sound of laughter from across the park. People who live their lives at the expense of the rest of us. They marry for love, not because if they try to slog through it alone, they’ll go insane.

“What made you change your mind?” I ask, turning to look at him.

He studies me carefully. “Today, at the parties. . . . I just realized how fucked up everything is, and that it would be nice to have some aspect of life that doesn’t revolve around their world. . . . I guess I realized that everything that’s happened to me since I won is because somebody else arranged it. I’d like to have something in my life that’s my own choice.”

“This is super romantic,” I say flatly because I don’t know what to actually say.

He exhales sharply. “Say what you want, but I enjoy spending time with you. I appreciate that you came to the Capitol this year, though I wish you weren’t subjected to half the things you are,” he says. “And anyway, you made a good argument—plus you’re pretty damned adorable when you get angry.”

“Pitch, really?” I demand, eyes wide. I turn away and bury my face in my hands as my cheeks warm. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

He laughs. “Also when you’re embarrassed.”

I can’t tell if he’s serious or if he’s just teasing me, but part of me fears that this decision we’ve made will somehow doom our friendship. I’m not ready for a _real_ relationship. . . . I just don’t want to get separated from my friend or have people tell us how to act around each other.

“C’mon, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says as he nudges my arm. “Let’s walk a bit.”

I comply without argument, but only because I’m still processing the situation. This won’t change things too much, will it?

“We’ll have to announce it somehow,” Pitch says.

“I don’t want to steal the thunder from Esther,” I tell him. “I can’t tell how excited she is to get married, but it’s already picked a date and everything.”

“Hmm,” he responds. “We can have something small back in District 7.”

“When?” I ask.

“Whenever we want,” he responds.

“Okay, that’s helpful,” I roll my eyes. “So we’ll just wake up one day and decide it’s the day to get married? My parents are going to be really thrilled about that.”

My poor parents. They will be beside themselves when they find out that Pitch and I are marrying, and if we do wait until we’re back in District 7, they will do whatever they can to try to convince me that I’m being dumb. Like Esther’s parents, I realize; they will think that I’m being foolish and will outgrow the relationship. They like Pitch well enough, but they don’t approve of the age difference or the fact that he was once my mentor. They’ve seen him on television for years, watching his Hunger Games get rehashed whenever it’s his duty to lead tributes to the arena. I suppose it’s easier to excuse the things I’ve done to get out of the arena alive than it is to do the same for somebody who is not their own flesh and blood.

“We’ll have to announce it while we’re here then,” he says.

“The other victors will _really_ never believe this,” I mutter. “They’ll think that we’re rigging the mentor situation hardcore.”

“I’m not sure there’s a way around that,” he says. “But in a couple years they won’t care anymore.”

A couple years is a long time when you have to go through multiple Hunger Games wondering who in the room thinks you’re manipulating the system. I can’t just survive with Isolde and Esther while ignoring everybody else. Especially if I have tributes who need to ally with anyone from districts other than 1 or 8.

“We’ll let somebody else do the dirty work,” I say, as my mind hooks on the idea of twisting the system to our own benefit. However, we’re not doing it to rig the Hunger Games but to make sure our lives are as much “ours” as we can make them. “Just have it slip out somewhere, and the Capitol will run with it. Will make it seem like we’ve been engaged for much longer.”

“Ah, clever. Pulling a Rosa,” he says.

“Exactly,” I say. As weird as it sounds, I like that term. She was a smart kid, and it doesn’t seem insensitive to use her name in this manner, not when she was the master of manipulation. “It’s her fault we’re together now anyhow.”

“I forgot about that,” Pitch says. “Strange kid.”

A few people mill about the park. The shadows lengthen and merge, but the shouts of children on the play equipment and the barks of dogs as they play fetch remind us that there are more people out here than just us. And Pitch must notice this, too, because he says,

“We’re going over there on the grass. And we’re going to sit together. I’ll hold you and we’ll pretend that no one else exists but ourselves.”

“Well, that’s oddly specific but okay,” I say to him.

“Is that not romantic enough for you?” he asks.

“I was hoping that you’d at least serenade me,” I say.

“I forgot my guitar. C’mon.” He leads me over to the aforementioned stretch of grass. I know it’s staged, but my heart still thumps in my chest and I can’t sort out what the hell is going on inside me. We sit on the grass, and he wraps his arms around me and holds me close to him. Even though I’m used to his embrace, it seems supremely weird to be doing this in front of people. Once we’re situated, he says, “Every good rumor needs a foundation.”

“Unless you’re Lala. Then you just make shit up and people run with it,” I tell him.

“Shh, don’t mention the demon’s name or you’ll summon her,” he whispers.

I laugh, and quickly cover my mouth before the wind carries the sound across the park.

The mood turns more somber when Pitch’s monitoring device beeps. I freeze for a split second and am about to jump to my feet when he tightens his hold on me.

“Hang on, before you freak out,” he tells me. Too late. My heart pounds furiously and nausea begins to rise in my throat. “They added a new feature so that it beeps when the tributes get close to something dangerous. Because Sage has been near that lava river, it has been beeping intermittently.”

Still, he takes a moment to check things over and make sure that everything’s in order. I try to steady the panic and flatten it out into a general anxiety that isn’t so eager to overwhelm me.

“I wanted to ask you about him,” I say now that I realize it may be the only time before he disappears back into the mentoring room. “Was what happened at the bloodbath planned?”

Pitch lowers his wrist.

“Nope,” he says. “That was entirely unexpected. I had told him to not let the other tributes boss him around, and I guess he took it to heart.”

“So he just snapped,” I say. “Or do you think it was part of his strategy?”

“I think he just snapped,” Pitch confirms. “The kid has some weird ideas for strategies; I don’t think he could really have pulled something like that off. . . . How’s your hand?”

He lifts my injured hand and turns it back and forth to inspect the new bandage I put over it. But I also notice that he not-so-discretely changed the topic.

“I put suture strips on the cuts, and wrapped it all so it wouldn’t ooze everywhere,” I tell him. Now I change the topic. “Are many of the victors married?”

He runs his thumb over the bandage for a moment before lowering my hand.

“A few,” he says. “Liberty used to be, but her husband passed away—of natural causes, mind you—several years ago. Vesa is, as you know.”

Vesa had twin sons last summer. They’re healthy and happy little creatures. Fat. Always giggling. I’ve never wanted children, but I enjoy playing with them when I come home on the weekends, and Vesa seems to appreciate the distraction. Her husband works for a lumber company and is gone most of the day, leaving her with most of the childcare. But I don’t ever remember that Liberty was married; that must’ve been before my time.

“What about other districts?” I ask. I think about Elijah and how I didn’t find out until right before we left the Capitol last year that he was married; I wonder how many others have spouses at home but keep it to themselves.

“There’s a few,” Pitch says. “Maybe half, I don’t know.”

It’s hard maintaining friendships after the Hunger Games, but part of me had hoped that maybe things would change as the years progressed. Most of the adults I know are married, but now I find out that this statistic drops dramatically for victors. Perhaps things don’t change and we’ll always be isolated in our own private worlds of torment. I lean into Pitch. I don’t want to be like them, and I don’t want to be like Elm, either.

“Do you think Esther will be okay? Married to a Capitol citizen, I mean,” I ask.

“I suppose it depends on who she’s marrying,” he answers. “I don’t know any university professors, so I can’t really say about him specifically, but there are decent people in the Capitol.”

I huff, and he says, “It’s hard to find them because even they have to keep up appearances, too.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

He takes a breath and scans the park around us. Fewer people hang around now that darkness has set in and we are only shadows in the grass. His eyes flick between joggers, parents with rambunctious children, and pet owners until finally he turns back to me.

“There’s a variety of thought towards the Hunger Games,” he says. “Most people enjoy it, of course, but some people here see it for what it is: a cruel method to keep the districts under Capitol control.”

“Why don’t they say something?” These people have the ability to be heard and to not be murdered for their dissent. They’re not district residents whose lives have little to no meaning.

“Why don’t we in the districts?” Pitch counters. “Everybody here lives under the rules of the few people who hold power. The Capitol citizens have the most safety and highest levels of comfort, sure, but the Hunger Games only work if they support it. If they stop enjoying it, the Games stop serving a purpose to keep the rest of us where we are.”

“So they can’t have the Capitol citizens talking bad about the Hunger Games,” I say as the pieces begin to come together. “Otherwise it won’t work, and they’ll lose their control over us.”

“Right,” Pitch says. “Thus they will make sure that any citizen who speaks out against it is silenced.”

“Murdered?”

“Have you noticed how many avoxes there are?” he asks.

“Yes, there are tons,” I say. “But I always thought that they were from the districts.”

“Most of them are,” Pitch agrees. “But quite a few are from the Capitol itself.”

“How does that work? Wouldn’t people recognize them and then be incensed at seeing their friends and families made into slave labor?”

“Avoxes from the Capitol are normally sent to the districts, but they retain a few here in low-profile jobs where your average citizen won’t run into them. Oftentimes they’re assigned the worst positions: working in the sewers, cleaning the Training Center, dealing with the trash and landfill—those sorts of things people don’t really think about.”

“They do that to their own people?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“I just thought . . . that they value the Capitolites more than us in the district.”

“They value no one,” he answers. “It’s just that the Capitol citizens were born in a more convenient location. They never have to fear the Hunger Games like we do in the districts, but they’re also not allowed to see the truth. We have the ability to grumble (as long as it’s not too loud) when the Hunger Games come about, but the Capitol citizens can show no lack of interest.”

“You can’t tell me that all those people at the party were there because they were forced to go, like us,” I say.

“Definitely not. Most of them are there out of their own free will,” Pitch says. “The system only works if the majority of the citizens buy into it. But there are a few who have varying levels of _appreciation_ for the Hunger Games. . . .”

“And they can do nothing about it or they’ll get avoxed,” I conclude.

Pitch nods. Then his expression sharpens, and he says, “You can never talk to anyone about this, Juniper. Don’t ever mention that we had this conversation.”

“Okay,” I say carefully. He studies my face. That’s the end of the conversation, I know. But he doesn’t tell me that it’s time to go back to the training center. Instead he adjusts his arms around me and looks up towards the sky. I follow his gaze upward, but am only met with the occasional sprinkle of stars in the dusty blackness. All of this manufactured _stuff_ surrounds them, and they have no idea what nature is really like. Parks and gardens and fields . . . none of them real. The stars overhead not visible, even late in the night when the sky grows darkest. And none of them know how fake their world is. It’s just part of the lie they live.

Not that I feel sorry for them. If they tried, they could see. They could realize that the arenas they watch on television have to be based on _something_ and that the pictures Isolde takes must be pictures of reality outside of their cocooned city. And yet they prefer to cover their eyes and embrace the lies because it’s more convenient.

At long last when the last people vanish from the park, Pitch says that it’s time to go.

“It’s been a long day,” he says. “We both need to try to sleep.”

So we stand up, brush off any grass clippings that might have stuck to us, and head off across the park to find a cab. Pitch holds my hand, and it’s the only thing that grounds me to the present because my mind wonders about what the world could be like if only the citizens of the Capitol realized that they are being manipulated even more than us district residents.


	22. Chapter 22

The second day of the Hunger Games dawns, and I stagger out of the room and plop down at the table. Pitch vanished several hours ago before the sun rose, and he’ll likely be glued to his station in the monitoring room for the majority of the day.

An avox serves me a modest breakfast that I force myself to eat in entirety because it keeps me from having to walk into the sitting room and turn on the television. If I eat, I’m doing something, and I can’t be held responsible for whatever I missed on screen. It’s a small portion, but by the time I finish, I want to throw up. Instead I head directly for the television and turn it on because I know that if I did miss anything, I’d never forgive myself.

Nothing. The Careers have already headed out to hunt for other tributes after a few hours’ sleep. They found nobody last night, and then a few of them stayed up far too late partying on alcohol they found in the Cornucopia.

I think about that little girl, Neptune, and I wonder how her family explains this all. Do they let her cheer when some kid’s brain gets bashed in but tell her that underage drinking is bad? How about all the swearing? Do they bleep that out so that their precious child doesn’t think that foul language is appropriate? At least her hero, the District 1 girl, wasn’t one of the ones intoxicated the night before. Maybe her parents tell themselves that it’s okay to watch this because their daughter’s favorite is not one of the bad ones.

My hand reaches for the remote and I almost flick it off when the District 2 male, still hungover, places his foot in a bad spot on the craggy rocks, and the ground cracks underneath him. His slowed reaction time keeps him from scrambling away before the surface breaks out beneath his feet. The rest of the hunting party staggers backwards so that they don’t plunge through the ground. Moments later, a cannon fires.

The remaining Careers in the party—the District 1 pair and the girl from District 2—stare at each other briefly before the District 2 girl dares to venture forward with carefully-placed steps. As she does so, the camera angle switches, and we see pulsating red lava just beneath the crumbled surface.

“That,” comes the voice of Janice Lovely, “was a major surprise.”

Caligula Klora breathes out slowly. “Did you have _any_ idea what they were standing on, because I didn’t,” he says. He shakes his head as the “Cannon Count” at the bottom of the screen increases by one.

“I did not, but that, I believe, is what is called a ‘lava tunnel,’” she replies. “Look how seamlessly it blended in with the rest of the landscape.”

The camera pans to show us an expansive “field” of black rock. The area they broke through had a bulge about ten feet across. The Careers realize this now, and they scramble back to even ground.

“Let’s get away from here,” the District 1 girl says. The other two don’t object and instead follow her across the black stretch of land and towards an area that appears to be solid dirt.

Since the Careers lost their entertainment value the moment they reached apparent safety, and because I’m sure that some of the viewers at home missed what happened to the District 2 male, we are treated to views from various angles of the kid plunging through the top of the tunnel into the lava below. We can’t see what exactly happens to him once he hits the lava because the cameras aren’t positioned at that angle, but it’s very clear that he couldn’t have recovered from that fall into the fast-moving red liquid. About the fifth time that they play this, I grab the remote and flick the television off. I dislike Careers, but I don’t want to listen to play-by-plays of this guy dying.

The sudden silence leaves me on edge, and I try to pick up a book to keep me occupied, but it does no good.

 _No wonder Elm drinks,_ I think to myself as I realize that I’ll probably have nightmares of this kid’s death since the image of his silhouette in front of the red-orange lava is so clearly emblazoned in my mind.

But I force myself to push the temptation from my mind and find myself turning the television on again. They still harp over the lava death, so I flip to a different station. Same thing. Another station. And then I remember that Daphne recommended station thirty-five, and since I figure it can’t be worse than any of the others, I press 3-5 on the remote.

To my surprise, it’s not a station airing the Hunger Games but a station with random photographs and paintings set to peaceful music. Scrolling words at the bottom update the viewers about the District 2 boy’s death, but they disappear after a couple minutes and I am left with a picture of a nighttime sky and soulful cellos. A Capitol television station that doesn’t play non-stop Hunger Games coverage? How peculiar. It takes several minutes before I finally accept that this isn’t a long-winded commercial or a segment in between episodes of arena excitement, and I find myself relaxing just the slightest. It’s enough that I pick up my book once more and allow myself to disappear into the pages.

Only when I finish the book and I set it on the coffee table does it occur to me that Daphne, of all people, recommended this channel. Why would somebody whose job it was to happily accompany the chosen children to the murder-palooza recommend a channel that downplays the Hunger Games?

Pitch and Elm return to the District 7 apartment for dinner. The three of us sit down to the table together and the avoxes give us individual plates of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables. They hurry back moments later to deliver a basket of bread and little dishes of butter. As they flit about, I can’t help but wonder where they were from, and if their families even know they’re still alive. How do they justify making a Capitol citizen an avox knowing that rumors are bound to travel?

Elm makes no pretense of sobriety as he asks an avox to bring him alcohol. Pitch starts to protest and Elm holds up a finger.

“I was drinking anyhow. What does it matter if it’s out here or in my bedroom?” he says.

Pitch scoffs. “You need to be sober for your tribute,” he says.

“Alcohol’s what gets me through the day,” Elm replies. “If I’m sober, I won’t be able to do my duties as mentor.”

Pitch rubs his forehead. “How much have you been drinking?” he asks.

Elm shrugs. He throws a glance at me, but I don’t want any part of this conversation and shift my eyes to my mashed potatoes that probably taste just fine if they didn’t get stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“I don’t see why you need to grill me,” he answers. This only earns him an intense stare, and he finally says, “A few a day.”

“What’s a few?” Pitch asks.

Elm clears his throat. “It varies.”

Pitch doesn’t give up, and I slouch down in my chair under the intensity of this conversation. Finally Elm mutters, “Two or three.”

“Two or three drinks per day?” Pitch clarifies.

Elm hesitates. “No, um . . . no,” he mumbles. The avox brings him his drink, and he shoots Pitch and me a murderous look before he lifts the glass to his lips. Within seconds, the alcohol is gone. Definitely not two or three drinks per day, and now that I see him having downed that entire glass like that, I doubt that when I stumbled across him the other night that it was only his second drink. Which is also why he took the glass with him. Leaving a glass or two behind for the avoxes to clean up wouldn’t be the end of the world because it could belong to anyone. But leaving behind half a dozen glasses, on the other hand, would be more problematic.

The avox brings him another drink even without asking. He shrugs apologetically at Pitch.

“Okay, no, this has to end,” Pitch says. “When we get back to District 7, you’re going back to the hospital.”

Elm laughs bitterly. “So they can sober me up again, and then I can start drinking again?” he asks, his eyes on the glass. “What’s the point of that humiliation?”

“The point is that you can then start to live without being totally inebriated,” Pitch says with exasperation.

“What would that get me?” Elm say. “Life’s much better when you don’t have to be sober for it.” He downs the second glass in the same amount of time as the first.

“Listen, if we can—” Pitch starts.

“Pitch, stop it,” Elm cuts him off. He stares hard at his former mentor, and it’s in that moment that I realize that Pitch is trying to protect Elm just like he tries to protect me. But Elm doesn’t want his protection. He’s made his decision, and this is how he’ll deal with the pain of the Hunger Games. My stomach lurches with sadness, and I stare down at my food knowing that I won’t be able to take another bite.

None of us eat. We pick at our meatloaf and potatoes and thank the avoxes for clearing away the dishes when the meal grows cold.

Elm finishes his fifth glass.

Pitch sits in silence and stares at the table because he can’t look at the empty glass that Elm rolls around between his palms as he waits for the avox to bring another. Right now, Pitch barely holds himself together, and one wrong move might break him.

“You have your way of handling things,” Elm says to Pitch, and his eyes shift to me for several seconds before they return to our former mentor. “Let me handle shit in my own way.”

The avox comes back with a sixth drink, and Elm thanks her, picks up the glass, and takes it back to his bedroom.

Pitch takes a deep, shaky breath. I reach out and take his hand. At first he doesn’t react, but then he tightens his grip and holds my hand firmly.

“He was the first tribute I brought to victory,” he mumbles. Then we fall into silence. Pitch stares intently at the table where Elm had sat; though he doesn’t say anything more about our fellow victor, it goes without saying that he’s still thinking about him. Minutes pass, but at last he says, “Please don’t ever go down that path.”

“I won’t,” I promise him. I mean it. But the scary thing is that I also understand why Elm drinks, and I wonder if maybe it’s not a bad thing. Not when you have been a mentor for so many years and see your tributes die each time. If there isn’t alcohol, what else is there to keep the suffering at bay?


	23. Chapter 23

I return to the same bookstore as a few days ago because I know that Quintus will have expected me to move on and go to a different store that hasn’t yet been tainted by his presence. It’s the morning of the third day of the Hunger Games, and enthusiasm for the event still runs high even if the only death that occurred in twenty-four hours was that of the District 2 male who fell into the lava.

Reminders of the Hunger Games surround me at every turn. From small televisions playing recap (muted so that it isn’t too distracting while browsing) to posters promoting this year’s event, no one can escape the fact that the Hunger Games consumes us all regardless of whether we love it or hate it. I step around a display for a memoir book written by a District 4 victor and head towards the children’s fiction where I hope to have a little break from the constant onslaught of Hunger Games. No, that is not possible. Instead I find myself starting stupidly at a display for a children’s book from the perspective of a fictional tribute who loves the Hunger Games and wants to represent her district to support Panem. It takes a moment before I can tear myself away, and then I grab a few books off the shelves without really thinking about my reading preferences and leave the children’s area.

Despite my hatred for the Hunger Games, I stop at various television stations to see if I can get a glimpse of the District 7 tributes. Every now and again, we see Wisteria and her District 12 alliance trudging through the forest, or Sage who now contemplates building a bridge across the lava river. Most of the time, the cameras focus on the Careers or the tributes who do more interesting things. Once Sage builds his bridge, no doubt he’ll get plenty of attention. But I never stay in front of the television for too long before I disappear into the books once more.

I’ve been lingering for about an hour and a half before I see Quintus. Panic sets in, but I don’t turn and bolt out of here like I know I should; instead I continue to browse this shelf. I can’t run every time I see him, and not for the sake of appearances. I stay for the same reason that I came to this bookstore: I want to live life without worrying about him.

He, of course, heads over to me when he notices that I’m here.

“I’m surprised you’ve returned,” he says as he steps over to my side. “I would have thought you’d have added this to your list of bookstores to avoid.”

I let out a breath. “I don’t like you, but I’m not scared of you,” I reply.

He laughs. “Fine. Walk with me,” he says, and I have no choice but to comply. He leads me slowly through the shelves, and I keep a half step behind him. “How’s your hand?” he asks.

I glance down at the suture strips, just a shade or two lighter than my skin tone. “It’s healing,” I answer. My knuckles also had bandages, but they were healed enough this morning that I didn’t have to wear them. The laceration on the back of my hand will take longer to mend, though with the Capitol’s technology, I don’t suppose that it will be too much longer as long as I keep applying ointment every night.

Quintus leads me through the bookstore and to a small “VIP” area towards the back. I raise an eyebrow as we step into the room. Of course he’s VIP here. He seems to be VIP everywhere.

He must see my reaction because he says, “I own the store.”

I turn and stare at him. “Bullshit.”

“You didn’t do your research before you came in, fortunately for me,” he replies.

No, I didn’t. I’m a fool, for certain. I unwittingly walked into Quintus’ domain not once but twice now, and today I thought I was clever by returning here. But the idea of him actually _owning_ this store baffles me. I stare at the shelves of books that line the wall of the VIP room. They all look worn; either second-hand or they are meant for the people here to lounge around and read without buying.

We sit down in a set of comfortable reading chairs with a small round table in front of us. Immediately an avox comes over, and Quintus orders us both coffees. _At least coffee I can manage_ , I think. _As long as there’s no alcohol in it._

“How does one become rich owning a bookstore?” I venture when the avox wanders away.

“I don’t make my money from here,” he says. “This is a hobby of mine, really. I told you that I enjoy literature, didn’t I? Now, what books did you manage to find?”

I realize I’m still holding onto the books I’ve chosen, clenching them close to my body so that they don’t fall from my arms. Slowly I release my grip and place them onto the table. Quintus goes through them, and my ears warm when he gets to the children’s books for some reason. They’re chapter books made for middle school kids, so it’s not like they’re the cardboard teething books, but it’s probably still weird anyhow, I don’t know. He only holds one up and says that it’s a good book before setting it back into the pile and continuing on with his assessment.

Quintus stacks them up and moves them to the side of the table as the avox returns with our coffees. I thank him and take the mug. “Go ahead and close up,” Quintus tells the avox, and I watch with the mug warming my hands as the avox walks over towards the door that leads back to the main bookstore, close it, and lock it. Then the avox disappears into a back room.

“Now, Juniper, I think we need to talk about some things,” he says.

On second thought, I don’t think I can manage coffee after all.

I set the mug on the table so that he won’t see how much I shake, and I sit up straight in my chair. My eyes flick towards the exit. It’s only locked from the inside, so if I need to escape, I’ll still be able to—No, there is no escape. I try to calm the panicky portion of myself, but to no avail. All I can do is mutter, “Okay, sure.”

Quintus takes a sip of his coffee, leaving me lingering in fear for a few extra seconds. Then he lowers his mug and says, “Your behavior at the bloodbath party, while understandable, was abysmal.”

Oh shit. Okay. I force myself to take steady breaths. Is this where he tells me that he’s going to have my family killed for my behavior?

“You detest me, I know, but you also don’t see the value in having me as your _friend_ ,” he continues. I feel his eyes on me, but I can’t work up the nerve to look at him. Instead I stare at the cup of coffee on the table in front of me. “There are others out there who aren’t nearly as tolerant as I am when it comes to your outbursts.”

“What does that mean?” I ask carefully.

“It means that if you can’t see me as your friend, then at least see me as your ally,” he answers.

I still don’t get it. Perhaps I’m dumb, but I don’t understand why I’d want to see him as anything besides the disgusting piece of trash he is. I furrow my brow as I stare at the coffee cup, concentrating on it so hard I wonder if I can start to move it with my mind.

“Perhaps I’m not convincing enough,” Quintus says. “Let me make it clearer: You are desirable in the eyes of many people in the Capitol, myself included. But I know when to control myself, if only just barely; others do not. As long as you are under my patronage, you do not need to worry about those other people.”

Wait . . . what?

I turn and look at him, not entirely certain what I heard. Is he telling me that he is _protecting_ me? By being an all-out disgusting individual, he is somehow offering me his protection from other more disgusting individuals?

“Is that how you justify this?” I ask him.

“We could break it off and see what would happen,” he replies.

Sure we could. He’d like to see me return to him, begging for his protection, wouldn’t he?

“So does this mean you want to have sex with me or not?” I ask.

“I’d love to have sex with you, but I am also not an idiot, contrary to your belief, and thus I will not get my hopes up,” he replies. “Nor am I going to force myself on you.”

Relief? Disbelief? What is that uncomfortable sensation in my abdomen?

Oh, right: anger.

“But you made me think that?” I demand. “You couldn’t just _tell_ me that you were trying to help me?”

“Ah, well, I had hoped you’d come around and see reason, but I know now that you have no interest in me,” he says.

“It took you long enough,” I snap.

He takes a sip of his coffee, completely unperturbed by my reaction. “That is the past; let’s talk about the present,” he says.

Before I can even think, I blurt out, “I’m getting married to Pitch.”

He doesn’t respond at first, and I know that I should have kept my mouth shut. But he’ll find out sooner or later, I tell myself; I don’t want him to decide that it would be great to hurt Pitch—or worse—just because he’s jealous. But at last Quintus slowly nods.

“This comes as no surprise,” he answers. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with _our_ relationship, I have no qualms with this.”

“What exactly _is_ ‘our relationship’?” I ask.

“I do hope you’ll still be agreeable to accompanying me to parties, to dinner, on dates,” he says. “I enjoy your company. . . . And in return, you don’t have to worry about the others in the Capitol who would ask for more and take without your consent.”

“So you want me to go on dates with you—”

“And at least _try_ to enjoy it.”

“Right, so I go on dates with you and pretend that I’m not struggling to keep from vomiting, and then you keep others away from me. . . . And all you ask is that you get to put your hand on my thigh and kiss me?”

“You make it sound vulgar,” he says.

“That’s because it _is_ vulgar!” I tell him.

He frowns at me.

But I know I don’t have much in the way of a choice here. The memory of his hands and lips on me makes me want to walk out of here, but I know that I can’t be a fool. If Quintus is truthful and if I turn him down, I’ll be in a far worse position. At least I know—I _think_ I know—what I’m getting with Quintus. At least I’ll be able to remain fully clothed.

“Fine,” I say.

He raises his coffee cup to his lips again and smiles over the edge at me before taking a sip. “I do think this relationship will work out between us,” he says. “Provided you behave yourself.”

I nod reluctantly. That isn’t my strength, but I know I’m going to have to make it that way; I don’t want Quintus to decide that he’s over me because I can’t stop recoiling from his presence.

“Now, what I would like, and this is just a _small_ request I hope you’ll humor, is for perhaps us to share our favorite works of literature,” he tells me as his eyes go to the pile of books. “It will at least give us something to talk about so that perhaps you stop thinking so much about how you detest me.”

“Okay,” I say. I don’t like the idea of having intellectual discussions about my favorite books with him, but I also hate his guts and have no idea what I’d do with him to “entertain” him enough that he doesn’t lose interest with me entirely.

He nods. “Now, I think I can make a recommendation or two for books,” he says. “No rush to read them, but I’d like to know your opinions on them.” And with that, he summons the avox and tells him the title of a few books. Then Quintus takes the books I’ve already chosen off my hands and promises me that they will be delivered to the apartment promptly. I thank him politely, and he dismisses me. I feel his eyes on me as I leave his VIP room.


	24. Chapter 24

I learn about my engagement to Pitch on the evening news.

Fear rolls through me as I wonder if this was Quintus’ doing. I try to tell myself that it doesn’t matter if it was because he told me that he was fine with me marrying Pitch, but I also realize that I’m putting too much faith in the bastard’s word. Quintus, who understands that rape is bad but doesn’t give a second thought about unwanted physical actions if there is no sex involved, does not seem like a man of great honor and I shouldn’t be so willing to trust him.

I leave the television and head to the bedroom where I find my purse thrown on the ground just like I last left it. It takes a second to dig out my phone. I dial my home number.

“Mom?” I say when she answers.

“Oh, Juniper, honey! Is everything okay?” she demands.

“Yes, of course,” I say. And it occurs to me that I never call when I’m in the Capitol, so they probably think that something terrible happened to me. “I’m sorry to freak you out. It’s not bad news.”

Mom lets out an audible sigh. Then I hear her muffled voice say, “It’s June. Yes, sure.” She comes back on a little louder, “Your father’s here. Are you okay if I put you on speaker phone?”

“Yeah,” I answer. There’s a click, and my mom confirms that they’re on speaker, so I draw in a deep breath. “I just wanted you to hear it from me and not from the news station. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before: Pitch and I are getting married.”

The words tumble out at once. A rush of syllables strung together with the briefest of pauses for punctuation. Then I wait for the aftermath.

Neither of them respond.

I clear my throat.

“We’re happy for you, Juniper,” Dad finally manages. “You’re a little young, but—”

“Honey, don’t give her that,” Mom chides him. Then she says to me, “Congratulations.”

“I’m sorry it’s a bit out of the blue,” I say. “We wanted to discuss it with you, but I don’t know what happened. Somebody must’ve got wind of it.”

“It’s not quite ‘out of the blue,’” Dad says.

“Maybe ‘random’ is a better word?” I suggest.

“What your father’s trying to say is that we know that you and Pitch really love each other, so it’s not too surprising,” she says.

We—what? Well, at least this means that even if the victors don’t believe it, some people out there do. Though it’s a little strange to think that my parents, of all people, think that Pitch and I love each other since they know me better than most people. I had figured they’d be able to see that this wasn’t a real relationship, at least not in the traditional sense.

“It’s a little soon,” Dad says. “He’s much older than you.”

“Um, the age difference isn’t going to change over time, Dad,” I tell him.

“No, I suppose not, but at least it wouldn’t seem so dramatic if you were thirty,” he says.

“You wanted us to wait until I was thirty?” I laugh. “Really?”

“Your father’s teasing you,” Mom says.

“They aren’t going to be grilling you with interviews again, are they?” Dad asks.

The humor vanishes from the conversation. I don’t know what will happen. I’d like to not have my personal life dug into every time I come to the Capitol, though I suppose if that were the case, Pitch and I would have planned this a little differently. Neither of us mentioned it when we discussed it the other day; it was far less of a priority, or maybe we just didn’t think it through.

“I’m not certain,” I answer carefully because I know that the phone is likely carefully monitored. My parents know it, too, even if they don’t understand the extent to which I’m scrutinized. “But I know that the engagement made news, so I just, you know, wanted to make sure that you didn’t find out from the television. Obviously not ideal.”

“Of course,” Mom says.

“June, I love you and am happy for you, but we will discuss this more when you come home,” Dad says. “And I’d like to have a word with Pitch.”

“Dad!” I press the phone to my ear and scrunch my eyes closed. No way. He’s really going to chew Pitch out?

“I just want to make sure that he takes good care of you,” Dad replies.

“Please, Dad?” I say. “Can you not give him a bad time about this?”

“He won’t,” Mom says. “We know that things are stressful enough for you right now.”

“Thanks,” I mumble. “I have to get going, though. I love you guys.”

My parents tell me that they love me, too, and I hang up the phone before either of them could make any further remarks about the situation. I let out a breath and toss the phone back into my purse.

Okay there. It’s official. It could be waved away as a rumor before, now it’s actually a thing.

And it’s so amazingly weird that I don’t even know what to think about it.

I head out of the bedroom and back to the sitting room where I plop down on the couch. Because nothing of great importance happened today (a few injuries and the first stages of starvation aren’t interesting, of course), news of the engagement gets more attention than it deserves. I turn to station 35 and grab up my book.

When Pitch arrives in the apartment, I lower my book and stare at him. “How’d everybody find out?”

“Find out?” he asks, and for a second I’m terrified that it really was Quintus who told everybody. But then Pitch realizes what I’m asking. He nods towards the bedroom and I follow after him.

“Where’d you hear about it?” he asks as we walk down the hall.

“On the evening news,” I say. “Obviously the most appropriate place to find out about one’s engagement.”

Pitch laughs and closes the door behind us. “I’m surprised that it got out that fast, though I guess it’s kind of dumb of me to think that people can keep their mouths shut,” he says. “Here, I want to show you something. I was planning on talking to you yesterday, but that got sidetracked.”

Because we were too busy watching Elm pound back a disgusting amount of alcohol.

I sit down on the edge of the bed while Pitch searches through the pockets of the pants he wore yesterday (which the avoxes so nicely hung up for him). At last he pulls out a little box and hands it to me. It opens easily in my hands and inside I find a small golden ring etched with pine boughs. I look up at him.

He clears his throat and sits down on the bed next to me. “A wedding ring,” he says. “I figured you wouldn’t want something too fancy.”

“Yeah, no, um, this is fine,” I say. Another reminder that this is a serious deal and we’re not just playing pretend. I take it out of the box and turn it over in my fingers, running my thumb across the etching. He made uncomfortably quick work in getting a ring. I’m still digesting that this is something that’s happening, but he’s already going into it full-swing.

“If you don’t like it, I can always—”

“No, I’m fine, really,” I say. “It’s just that, you know, a few day ago I hadn’t contemplated marriage at all, and now I’m holding a wedding ring.”

“Yeah, again, sorry,” he says. “I had planned on telling you, and I didn’t think that it would catch on so quickly, so I figured no harm in getting things started.”

“Nothing exciting happened in the arena today, so I guess we’re just the next best thing,” I mumble. “How’d everyone find out anyhow?”

He nods towards the ring. “I went into a jewelry store and explained that I wanted a ring,” he tells me as he watches me rotate it in between my fingers. “I was pretty quiet about it, or at least I pretended to be. Told them enough that they could figure out who it was for. And then I made them promise not to tell anyone that I’d been there.”

I roll my eyes. “Which was just what they needed to hear in order to get the rumor going,” I say. Pitch looks pretty proud of himself, and I have to laugh. “But thank you. It’s a nice ring.” I slip it on my finger to make sure it fits. It does. It makes me wonder if Pitch measured my finger in my sleep, or if it was just a really good guess. I remove it and place it back in the box, which Pitch takes from me when I hold it out to him.

“I’ll keep it safe,” he assures me. Good because I’d probably accidentally lose it.

“Why do people even care?” I ask him. “Not about the ring, but about us? Why does it make the news when I haven’t heard a thing about Esther?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know who Esther’s marrying, but I imagine it probably made the news when it was first announced, just not in District 7 because neither Esther nor her fiancé are from there,” he says. “Alternatively, maybe her fiancé was able to keep things quieter. . . . Regardless, we’ll probably get a fair bit of attention because marriage between victors isn’t very common.”

When was the last time one victor married another? I have no clue. Not that I cared much about the lives of victors before I was a victor myself, especially if they weren’t from District 7.

“More interviews and Q&As?” I groan.

“Probably,” he says. He turns the box with the ring around in his hand absently. “Especially when things are slow in the arena. I doubt we’ll get _quite_ as much attention as last year, but you know. . . . Better the attention is on us than they take out their boredom on the tributes.”

I nod meekly. Of course. Better we suffer than the kids in the arena because whatever humiliation gets released on us is better than the pain and death that would be inflicted on them.

“I called my parents already. Told them about us so they wouldn’t find out from gossip,” I say. “They said that they’re happy for us, but I think my dad’s going to rip into you when we get back to District 7.”

Pitch grins. “I shouldn’t laugh, but I suppose I should have expected it,” he says. “They’re probably pissed.”

“No, I don’t think they were,” I say, leaving off the part that they weren’t even really surprised. Their reaction was all over the board, really. “It was hard to tell. It’s probably just because I’m their only kid.”

He slips the ring box into his pocket. “What did you tell them? Any details?”

I furrow my brow. “What? What _would_ I tell them?”

“I just want to make sure our story’s consistent,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. “No, just that we wanted to discuss it with them, but then it got out to everyone.”

“Alright, let’s go with this,” he starts, but then he falters and hesitates. “Wait, coming up with a convoluted backstory isn’t going to help if you’re a terrible liar.”

“You have such faith in me,” I say flatly.

“I just know you too well,” he says. And it’s true. If it had been my job to go into the ring shop and spread the rumor, I probably would have botched it right away. Spreading the word that Lala was promoted before she actually was promoted had been a very big stretch for me, but I wanted it so badly that it was less of a lie and more of a desperate wish for the truth. Pitch asks, “How long have we been engaged?”

“Um, three weeks,” I say. “Too much longer and my parents will be offended. Any shorter and it’ll seem like we just pulled this out of our asses. Which we did, I guess, but nobody needs to know that.”

“Sounds good,” he says. “We can say that we planned on having a small wedding when we got back to District 7, and we didn’t want to interfere with the Hunger Games.”

And so we spend a couple minutes building our brief engagement. In the end, we hash out a few details that aren’t really remarkable; none of it stands out, and nothing requires anybody else to authenticate what we say.

Pitch taps his fingers against the bed as he sits in thought. Whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t share it. I go over the details in my head again as I try to commit them to memory so that, when asked, they just roll off my tongue. The good news is that even though I’m a terrible liar, I’m also not really that forthcoming with personal information, so any hesitation would be perceived as my reserved nature.

“Juniper, I have a request, and this time I’m not drunk,” Pitch says, pulling me out of my mind. I raise an eyebrow because I’m pretty sure I know where this is going. “I’d like to kiss you again. We’ll have to anyhow in front of the cameras, but. . . . You know I’d rather do it on our own terms.”

I wipe my sweaty palms on the legs of my pants and try to steady myself.

“I, um, haven’t brushed my teeth since lunch,” I fib. “And it was salmon day.”

He stares at me.

I duck my head knowing full well that it was probably the worst excuse I could come up with. So I stare at the carpet and say, “I know the engagement is scripted, but I don’t want _everything_ to be so well choreographed.”

“So, you don’t mind me kissing you? You just want spontaneity?” he asks.

I shrug. “Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I mean, I’m not saying that it has to be totally random, but not like we’re practicing for a show.”

Under normal circumstances if given the opportunity to kiss Pitch, I wouldn’t take him up on it. That’s too much, too fast. But I also know that it goes hand-in-hand with the decision we made, so I can’t avoid it forever. And anyway, kissing Pitch is better than kissing well . . . pretty much most people I’ve kissed. Which is a pretty dismal and depressing list, if I’m going to be honest, so it’s not like it’s saying much.

“Understandable,” Pitch replies. He stands up and yawns before muttering, “Let’s go eat something before I fall asleep.”

He hasn’t been sleeping well. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s so exhausted when he wakes up far earlier than I do in order to keep an eye on his tribute. I hate it, but what choice do we have? Anger flares within me and I know that no matter how weird or surreal or heavy it is that Pitch and I are getting married, we’re making the right choice. At least something will be our own if we can control nothing else about the world around us.


	25. Chapter 25

The morning of the fourth day brings death. Pitch has already vanished to the mentoring room, and I sit cross-legged on the couch with a book abandoned in my lap as the Career pack descends upon the District 8 tributes who huddle together between large black outcrops of lava rock. They try to scramble away, but the District 2 girl immediately plunges her sword into the District 8 boy’s body, and the District 1 girl walks confidently across the craggy terrain until she catches up with the frantic District 8 girl and smashes her head in. And within the span of a couple minutes, District 8 is out of the running for victor.

 _Poor Esther_ , I think as the television shows still images of the two deceased tributes in their school photos, each dressed in crisp District 8 uniform and with forced smiles on their faces.

About half an hour later, Pitch appears in the apartment.

“Interview,” he says. “Several of us got called.”

I wait for him to tell me that I’m required to go, but he only heads into the bedroom to freshen up. Every time they announce an interview, they summon the mentors individually. Each one is chosen for a specific reason. I can understand why they’d want Isolde or Freya, who are mentoring the District 1 girl and District 2 girl respectively, but why would they choose Pitch? It’s much too early to be doing a Top Eight interview.

When Pitch reemerges, I grab up my book and follow him to the elevator. He shoots me a look.

“I’ll just wait downstairs,” I say. “You can have all the attention.”

Once we reach the lobby of the Training Center and the group of coordinators see us, I step to the side to avoid their attention. Already a few mentors have assembled, and over the next couple minutes, I watch from a bench as others arrive. In the end, they have all of the Careers-mentors and Pitch. An odd combination until you remember that Pitch’s tribute offed someone in the bloodbath. He hasn’t been doing a great many things since then, unless you count trying to find resources to cross the lava river, which he abandoned to instead find a real river that would provide him water.

Pitch comes and sits next to me as the Isolde and the other District 1 mentor, Cronus, are called forward to begin the interviews. He bounces his leg as he waits for his turn, but since he’s the District 7 mentor and they usually go in chronological order, he’ll have to wait until Freya and the District 4 mentors have had their turns.

“Thanks for waiting with me,” he says after a few minutes.

“Do you have any idea what they’re going to be asking you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “The usual stuff, of course,” he says. “They’ll want to know why Sage did what he did, and probably what his next plans are.”

Since Pitch knows none of that, it’ll be a very boring interview. But that won’t stop the Capitol from wanting to pick his brain regardless. It seems that they get off on just _seeing_ the mentors, even if the information they pry from them amounts to nothing.

The District 1 mentors finish their interview, and as they step back into the Training Center, the smiles they plastered on their faces slide right off. Tethys and Hero chat with them as the coordinators usher Freya forward to take her place.

When at last it’s time for the District 4 mentors to be interviewed, Isolde meanders over towards us.

“Hey, guys,” she says with a grin. “I heard the news. I guess a congratulations is in order.”

As much as I’d like to tell Isolde not to bother, I know that I can’t let our guard down anywhere remotely public. So I just smile and Pitch thanks her for the both of us.

“Am I allowed to pry?” she asks.

“Pry about what?” I want to know. But Pitch only says, “I’m surprised you’re even bothering to ask first.”

Isolde rolls her eyes at him. But she says, “When are you guys getting hitched?”

“When we get back to District 7,” he answers her easily. “Haven’t chosen a date quite yet. . . .”

When we have a bit of privacy, I’ll have to explain this all to Isolde. She’ll get a kick out of it, at least, and that will make things a hair better. Esther might be interested, too, but she also probably feels like shit right now since her tribute just died, so that’ll have to wait.

“So, like, am I invited?” she asks.

“I’m not even sure my parents are invited,” I tell her.

“Your parents are invited,” Pitch tells me. Then he says to Isolde, “We had been trying to keep it pretty small so it stayed off the media’s radar, but clearly that didn’t work.”

“Right, so what I hear you saying is that you need a wedding planner?” she says.

I laugh. “No, we don’t,” I say. “But if we end up inviting people, we’ll let you know. And Esther, too.”

Isolde nods. “You better,” she says.

She chats with Pitch and me until Pitch is called up for his own interview. We wish him luck and he mutters out a thanks before standing up and heading off towards the awaiting coordinators. Interviews suck. I don’t know how Isolde and Pitch can handle them so well.

“I haven’t seen you around the past few days,” Isolde says as she plops down in the spot Pitch was moments before. “Clearly we haven’t been able to chat much since you arrived here if I didn’t know you two were getting married.”

“Well, it turns out that one of the victors complained about me being around and thinks that I’m secretly helping Pitch mentor,” I mutter darkly. “Which is just complete bullshit, but whatever.”

Isolde shifts in his seat.

“Um, Juniper,” she says after a bit of contemplation. “That was me.”

I turn to her. “What?!” I demand. “ _You_ lodged a formal complaint about me?!”

“Listen, I didn’t know that—”

“Why the _hell_ would you complain about something like that?” I snap. “I was not helping Pitch! I was keeping him company!”

Isolde’s eyes dart around the Training Center. The only other people besides us are the coordinators waiting at the door to receive Pitch when he comes back in. Cronus vanished when Isolde came over here to talk with us, no doubt retreating to the mentoring room to get back to business.

She keeps her voice low when she talks, but her words are hurried and apologetic, “I’m sorry. Really, I am. It’s nothing personal, I promise you. I made the complaint as a formality, but it got out of hand a bit. I didn’t expect that everyone would get so serious about it.”

“And then you come over here and have the audacity to pretend that you want to see me?” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “I have a responsibility to help my tribute,” she says. “And yes, that means that if it looks like another tribute has an unfair advantage, I’m going to say something. Again, it wasn’t meant as anything personal towards you. I would have done it were it any other victor.”

“How can you say that?” I demand. “You Careers always have a horde of non-mentoring victors around.”

“We’re not Careers,” she corrects with irritation. “And anyway, the non-mentoring victors don’t interfere.”

Interfere? What the hell was I doing to interfere?! I was just spending time with Pitch. He’s the one who asked me there. He asked me to come with them to lunch. That’s all. I didn’t do _anything_ that would indicate that I gave Sage an advantage. I trusted Isolde, and this is how she treats me?

“Go back to your Career pack,” I growl at her.

“Juniper—”

“Honestly, I don’t care,” I say.

Isolde sits there for another minute as though I might change my mind and forgive her. Forgiveness isn’t an option right now. My chest burns as though somebody took my organs and threw them into the fires of the arena before stuffing them back into my body. Isolde stands up and walks away quickly while I glower at the floor tiles. All this unnecessary suffering was her fault. I thought she was my friend, but clearly I misunderstood the relationship between victors.

When Pitch returns, I want to tell him about Isolde, but out in this open space exposed to all sorts of unknown ears, I can’t say anything to explain the sudden shift in mood. So as soon as he walks over toward me, I jump to my feet to meet him and try not to turn my anger towards him. I stare hard at the elevator ahead of us as we approach it.

“I’m going to guess this is something not related to the interviews,” Pitch says as we step into the elevator. The doors close silently and he leans forward to press the button for the seventh floor.

“Turns out Isolde was the one who made the complaint,” I say.

He nods slowly. “And you’re angry at her for doing this,” he says.

Obviously that’s why I’m angry. I don’t say anything for fear that I’ll snap at him, so instead I wait for the elevator doors to open before I step out into the District 7 apartment.

“Did she say why she did it?” Pitch exits the elevator after me and glanced around the apartment to see who all is present. An avox scurries out of the way and back into the rooms they work in near the dining room.

“She said that it looked like we had an unfair advantage, and she would have done it regardless of what victor it was,” I reply bitterly. I cross my arms over my chest and lean up against the wall.

Pitch thinks about my words. I don’t understand why she didn’t at least _tell me_ that there was a problem, either to get me out of there so she wouldn’t have to make a complaint or to give me a head’s up that she was going to make one. Or maybe realized that I wasn’t even trying to give Pitch’s tribute an advantage at all and that maybe I was just hanging around Pitch because I wanted to. But no. I seethe inside and try to stem the anger, but to no avail.

“I’m sorry, Juniper,” he says at last. “I know Isolde, and I don’t think it was anything against us.”

“That’s what she told me but seems like there were a million different ways to go about it other than what she did,” I say.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agrees. He lets out a breath. “At least we know who it was and don’t have to keep wondering.”

I snort. Not super reassuring when it was one of the few people you trust.

But I know that despite the anger, I can’t keep thinking about it, just like I can’t keep thinking about how the tributes of District 7 will die soon enough, or how disgusting Quintus is, or how much I hate the Capitol or anything like that. I try to peel away the thoughts from my body and cast them aside, but it does no good, so I force myself to switch topics.

“How did the interview go?” I ask.

Pitch nods. “Pretty much as expected,” he says. “They wanted to know Sage’s secrets and I told them nothing.”

“I don’t understand why they like interviews so much when there’s nothing to say,” I mutter.

“The rest of the world stops for them when the Hunger Games happen,” he explains. “Kids are out of school early, or they have parties in class; adults in many jobs get a holiday until the Hunger Games end; everything is hyped up so that people focus on the Hunger Games and only the Hunger Games. There is literally nothing else for people to do except watch it. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are few television channels that play anything except the latest updates from the arena. . . . During the rest of the year, it’s not like that. There are other things for people to watch that are completely independent from the Hunger Games, but not right now. For a few weeks every summer, nothing exists except this.”

Disgusting. I grit my teeth to keep from saying anything that might be considered traitorous. Not that learning this information makes me feel more sympathetic to the citizens of the Capitol, but it’s absolutely nauseating that there is nothing to distract them from the Hunger Games or remind them that life exists outside what they see in the arena.

“I suppose we are the only way for them to see something new, even if there’s not much to really see,” Pitch concludes. I feel his eyes on me, and I look up to find him studying me carefully. This goes back to the conversation we had the other day: how the people of the Capitol are trapped as much as we are but they’re brainwashed into enjoying the bloodshed. But he can’t say anything like that here, not when we are so carefully monitored. After allowing his words to sink in for a second, he says, “I need to change and get back to the monitoring room.”

He hesitates for a second, and I take the opportunity to throw myself into his arms. He holds me and buries his face in my hair. Neither of us move. While we are together like this, we don’t have to worry about interviews or backstabbing mentors or how messed up the Hunger Games are in general. All I think is that I am with the one person I can trust, and everything in this moment is okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I mentioned this before but I'm bringing it back up: I don't normally write romance. For that reason, I'm a bit self-conscious of my writing here, but I knew going in that I was going to try something different this time around. When I finished up this chapter the other day, I just stared at the screen and contemplated my life choices. I hope the bits of romance (if you can really call it that?) scattered throughout the story so far are at least realistic/decent and not cringe-inducing.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	26. Chapter 26

Twelve tributes remain. Eleven must die before the Hunger Games ends. As much as you want the victor to be declared so you can go home, you also don’t want eleven people to be murdered for that to happen. So you sit here and try not to disintegrate into a mess while you simultaneously want the tributes to die so that nobody has to suffer through this anymore and also want them to live because maybe—just maybe—they’ll be the victor.

The tributes are boring. Despite the double murder of District 8 earlier this morning, it’s painfully clear that most of the tributes skate through the arena with only minor inconveniences. That does not bring good ratings. So in the early afternoon, Wisteria and the District 12 pair leave the relative safety of the jungle and wander across a large open expanse of black land pock-marked by chimneys of varying heights and diameters with bubbling lava popping and splattering out of them. The globs of lava cool quickly, turning from orange to black within seconds though I don’t doubt that they’re still too hot to touch. Steam from these chimneys obscures the view every now and again, so the camera angles constantly switch to make sure we can see everything clearly.

The alliance has been mediocre at best. None of the three of them talk much to each other except to discuss business: where they want to go, how to find food, where they think the best water source is. Nobody exchanges any personal information, and so far they have been terribly unremarkable. Not a single one of them have made themselves endearing to the Capitol.

Suddenly one of the chimneys bursts open, sending chunks of hardened rock and fresh splatters of bright red lava showering out around them. The explosion shoots globs of debris towards the three tributes, and they scream as bits of liquid fire fall upon them. The District 12 male, Brier, gets clocked in the head with a solid piece, and he staggers back in confusion. Blood trickles out of a laceration along his hair line, but after a few seconds he manages to gather his wits. Meanwhile, the District 12 female, Winter, is hit with fresh lava that burns through her sleeve and into her arm. She starts screaming in pain and tearing at her clothing. Wisteria gets smacked with a partially-cooled block in the leg. She screams and falls to the ground; it’s not immediately clear if her leg is broken.

I sit on the edge of the couch, unable to look away from the television. My fingers dig into the cushions beneath me.

Brier grabs onto Winter to steady her, and once she is more coherent, he starts to go towards Wisteria. What remains of the chimney sputters again, and Winter shrieks, “Leave her! We need to get out of here!”

The District 12 male hesitates as his district partner grabs onto his arm and pulls, but Wisteria only turns and looks up at her allies with absolute hatred. Despite the sparks that start to rain down on her, she pushes herself to her feet and staggers after them. Brier finally throws off Winter’s grip and closes the final few feet between himself and Wisteria. He grabs onto her, puts an arm around her shoulders, and helps her clear the area.

The three of them move as fast as they can, but another chimney nearby starts to cough a warning to them. The alliance members maneuver around it, but when a third chimney clears its throat, it’s obvious that they won’t leave this part of the arena without further injury, if at all.

“Leave her!” Winter repeats as she turns around to Brier. “She’s slowing us down! Come on!”

Brier’s face contorts in confusion as he tries to decide what to do. He knows that his district partner is right, of course; Wisteria slows him down, and he won’t be able to get out of there alive if he’s supporting her. But at the same time, he’s probably a decent human being who doesn’t want to leave another person behind in a situation like that.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters to Wisteria before removing his arm from her.

Wisteria stands there wide-eyed, her weight all on her uninjured leg, as she watches Brier leave her behind to catch up with his district partner. Sparks sizzle her hair and burn her skin, but for a long second, she doesn’t realize that. It’s only the noise of a nearby chimney that prompts her to move. Without hesitation, she begins to limp-run. She winces with each step she makes, but she doesn’t slow as the lava rains down behind her, great globs plopping to the ground where she had been moments before.

And when she catches up with the others, Wisteria rams into the District 12 girl and sends her towards a short, fat chimney. The District 12 girl stumbles, but manages to catch herself before she falls into the open vent. Wisteria punches her in the face, and the girl staggers again. Then with one final shove, Wisteria pushes the District 12 girl into the open chimney as it begins to sputter and spew forth. The girl screams, but moments later falls silent. A cannon booms.

Brier stands there stupidly looking at Wisteria and the place where his district partner had been seconds before.

“Why—?” he starts, but he can’t get the words out.

“That bitch was going to leave me behind,” Wisteria spits out at him.

Brier shakes his head as Wisteria approaches him. “I can’t believe . . . you just . . . I mean, she was—”

“You were going to leave me behind, too.”

“I couldn’t help you,” he says apologetically. “If I did, we both would have died.”

Wisteria reaches for the hammer in her belt. “I just want to go home and see my daughter.”

Before Brier can react, she swings the hammer around and smashes it into the side of his head. He falls to the ground, and she brings the hammer down again. And again. The cannon above announces his death, and Wisteria wrenches his backpack off his body and staggers away from the bursting pipes of lava.

I hold my breath as she steps off the blackened earth and onto soft green grass.

Then the announcers go wild.

I flop backwards on the couch and stare blankly at the television. Wisteria killed both her allies. Just like that. Yes, they wanted to leave her behind, but it wasn’t unreasonable for them given the circumstances.

 _She snapped_ , I think. _Sage lost it on the first day, but Wisteria maintained her cool until she realized how real death was. And then she couldn’t hold it together anymore._

And her kid. . . . The kid she swore she wouldn’t sell out for another few hours of life. . . .

“We have had four deaths today on Day 4,” Janice Lovely is saying. “In just one day, both District 8 and District 12 are completely out of the running for victory. But District 7 is on _fire_!”

“We are only two deaths away from our Top Eight,” Caligula adds. “I can’t believe it. This is just . . . watching this is phenomenal! And what did Wisteria say about a daughter? Did you catch that? . . .”

And then they show replay after replay of Wisteria killing the District 12 pair.

In the evening, Pitch goes to bed and I lie with him and listen to his breathing slowly even out, but sleep doesn’t come for me. Too many thoughts roll through my head, and I can’t shut my brain off to give me a few hours of sleep. I try to match my breaths with his, but I lose track too easily and struggle to fall back in line with his breathing. So eventually I wiggle out from his arms and slip out of bed. Grabbing a book, I head into the hallway.

Once again, I find Elm at the dining room table with a partially-empty glass of alcohol in his hands. Several empty glasses surround him where the avoxes haven’t come to take them away.

And he is just completely drunk. Not even pretending that he is sober. He’s well over six beers into the evening judging by the empty glasses. And who knows how many more came before this?

He’s drunk, and he’s abandoned his tribute. There’s no way he can help her, not when he’s in this state, no matter how much he claims that the alcohol helps him mentor. She will die because of his negligence, and no tribute, no matter how shitty they are, deserves that. How is it fair that I am punished for merely being here because somebody suspected that I might help another mentor, and yet nobody gives a rat’s ass if Elm can perform his duties? Does this mean in the future I’ll be damned to mentor every year because everybody in this fucking district is either completely incapable of mentoring or just outright unwilling?

Suddenly I stomp over and sweep all of the glasses to the ground where they shatter against the hardwood floor. The cacophony fuels my anger.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I demand when he startles and stares up at me. He can barely hold my gaze with his watery eyes. “Your tribute is injured and miserable, and you’re _drunk_!”

“I know,” he mutters, the smell of alcohol strong on his breath. “I know, I just. I know.”

“Give me your arm,” I snap, but I grab up his wrist before he can say anything. Carefully I read through Wisteria’s stats before I check out her bank. Her little stunt earned her a lot of money judging by the transaction log. And what has Elm done about it? Not a damned thing. I mutter a few choice words under my breath before sending Wisteria burn cream and pain medication from the store.

Does Elm thank me?

No, he’s too drunk to even manage the words.

I grab him but the upper arm and tug. “C’mon,” I grunt. Eventually he staggers to his feet, glass crunching beneath his shoes. I barely manage to miss stepping on a shard as I lead him away from the table. He can barely walk upright, and once I manage to help support him to his bedroom, I open the door and shove him into the bed.

Without another word, I turn to leave.

An avox already begins to clean up the broken glass in the dining room. No longer able to stomach being out there, I head back to Pitch’s bedroom and crawl into bed. Pitch mumbles something in his sleep and draws me closer to him. I close my eyes and focus once more on his breathing.

Damn Elm and his alcoholism.

Damn this whole system.

Everything here is just complete and utter bullshit.

And yet I’m the one who decided it would be worthwhile to come to the Capitol when it wasn’t required of me this year, I remind myself.

Pitch sleeps easily beside me. He won’t stay asleep for long; either his alarm clock will wake him or his own anxiety will. But I know that the few hours he gets are because the nightmares that fill his nights won’t rip him apart while I am here. And he does look peaceful when he sleeps, like none of this is happening and we’re back in District 7 without having to worry about mentoring at all. I lean forward and kiss him on the forehead, and the corners of his lips twitch with the slightest hint of a smile before he disappears back into his dreams.


	27. Chapter 27

By the time morning of the fifth day arrives, Wisteria’s backstory has been uncovered and everybody knows about the secret daughter. They have photographs of the girl from shortly after birth to the present, and they keep showing the ones with the two of them smiling together. Nobody knows who the father is—Wisteria never claimed anyone on the birth certificate—but the news anchors and reporters take stabs about who it might be. They don’t know any names, but it doesn’t stop them from guessing that it might have been a friend to somebody she absolutely cannot stand to even a family member. It’s so disgusting; I remind myself that no matter how crude this is, it’s keeping her alive.

They show footage of Wisteria from late last night as she downs pain pills and slathers burn cream on all the places where the lava splattered on her. Then they show her this morning where she’s eating bits of food from hers and Brier’s bags. If it bothers her that she lost a third of their supplies when she pushed the District 12 girl into a lava chimney, she doesn’t show it.

Quintus calls mid-morning and invites me to a lunch party. He gives me the address which I scrawl into a slip of paper and shove into my purse before I go to the bedroom to get ready. I try to block out thoughts of where I’m going by telling myself that it’s just a quick errand I need to run, and when I get back Pitch’ll probably be taking a break and I can bother him for awhile.

So I climb into a cab and give the cabbie the directions and once again try to pretend that I’m not going wherever I’m going. It doesn’t work, so I instead use the time to try to convince myself that I need to be _nice_ towards Quintus and show him some decency, even if he doesn’t do the same for me.

When the cab pulls up in front of a restaurant, I let out a breath. At least it’s not someone’s private house. I open the door but before I can step out, Quintus appears from seemingly nowhere and holds the door open for me.

“Good afternoon, Juniper,” he says. He stretches out his free hand, and I take it. He helps me out of the car and closes the cab door after me. “I’m delighted you were able to make it—sorry that it was so last minute.”

“I had nothing better to do than watch recaps of Elm’s tribute push another tribute into a lava chimney,” I say to him. I don’t know if that is polite or impolite to say. I don’t know anything anymore, honestly.

He leans in and kisses me briefly on the lips before nodding towards the restaurant. “You ready?”

“Yep,” I manage, and he leads me inside.

The restaurant, like the one he took me to last time, would be something I’d never step foot in were it my decision. Everything reeks of excess expense, but at least it’s not as over-the-top as the Emerald Well or whatever the name of the last place was. This is casual dining for rich people, if I had to take a guess at who made up its client base. Quintus leads me over to a table in a side room (of course—he’s much too rich to mingle with the regular people) where about half dozen people sit around a large circular table meant for twelve. We take our seats and I have never before felt so out of place.

Quintus sits on my left, but a tall, fat woman with pointy ears sits to my right. Sweeping makeup of greens and browns try to make her eyes seem larger than they are. It’s almost comedic, like I have joined a costume party, but aside from her ridiculous get-up, there’s nothing humorous about her. She exudes a predatory air, and I turn and stare at my empty plate so that I don’t have to look at her scowl. Quintus draws me away from my solitude by introducing the various people around the table. I try to remember them all, not because I want to but because I know I’ll be dragged into conversation with them at some point during this event. The woman’s name is Clementina, and she pats my arm when Quintus introduces us, her features lifting only briefly.

The staff begins to bring out beverages and appetizers which they spread out on the table between people. This only highlights the fact that not all the seats are filled, and sometimes folks have to stretch out across an empty seat to pass the trays back and forth.

“What would you like, my dear?” Quintus asks me after I watch a few trays move back and forth.

I shake my head to decline, but I catch myself a moment later so I say, “I don’t know. Too many options.” The last place where we just had fish eggs. And the other time I’ve eaten with Quintus at a party where they gave us dish after dish of food without asking what we wanted. Now that I have a choice and have to think about something other than surviving in this man’s presence, I don’t know what to do.

Quintus hands me a tray and I take a half egg out of it and put it on my plate. Okay, that’s a start, and it’s not too out of place; some of the others only have one or two items on their plates, too.

“It’s a deviled egg,” he tells me.

Okay, whatever that means. A bit foreboding, but then again, it at least looks decent. I nibble on the egg as the people at the table converse.

When the waitstaff comes and picks up the trays and removes our plates, I work up the nerve to ask Quintus, “Where are the rest of the people?”

Before he can answer, the woman beside me belts out a cackle that draws attention from everybody else at the table. I hold my breath and wish I could sink underneath the pristine tablecloth where nobody would find me. What did I say that was wrong?

“You didn’t _tell_ her, Quintus?” the woman says.

Quintus clears his throat. “I am terrible at explaining these things, so I thought that maybe Arnoldo would be better at enlightening her,” he says.

Arnoldo focuses his attention on me. He’s a sharp-looking person as though he is made of all bones and joints. He wears glitter on his cheekbones and his hair has been swept backward out of his face aside from a curlicue gelled into place on his left temple.

“Of course, of course,” he says. “My Juniper, those seats belong to the dead.”

I blink at him.

He nods solemnly. “In the chair to my immediate left is a man who passed away two years ago last winter. Next to Clementina is a very kind and gentle woman who none of us knew while she was living. And so on, and so forth. They request our presence every now and again, and who are we to say no? Not us who see the world of the dead as clearly as we see the world of the living.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Back home the only person who claims to see ghosts is Old Mrs. Hillshire who everybody says is senile and leaves her to her own devices as long as she doesn’t bother anyone else. I could never fathom that people would invite her out to lunch and set up chairs for the deceased around the table.

I risk a glance at Quintus. He remains straight-faced, but I think I see a gleam in his eye.

“Um, do they talk?” I ask because everyone waits for me to say _something_ and I have no idea what the hell they want from me.

This gets a collective laugh, and I wonder if I’m the butt-end of a joke that they can’t keep contained any longer. It would be better that way than to be surrounded by people who believe they can see the dead.

But no. They’re serious.

“They don’t _shut up_ ,” Arnoldo tells me. “Honestly, getting them out to the restaurant is the most peace we get!”

This is a _thing_. It’s something that happens often enough that they make an event out of it. And for some damned reason, Quintus invited me. It has to be a joke. There is no other explanation.

Now that the topic of the dead has been breached, the conversation turns towards the various encounters and sightings people have had since their last get-together. One man has seen his grandmother twice. Another saw the spirit of a child who has inhabited her house for over two hundred years. Even when the waiters and waitresses begin to deliver meals (chicken and potatoes with sauce, plus mixed vegetables), the conversation carries on with no regard to who can hear them. At one point, I make eye contact with one of the waiters and the expression on his face mirrors what I feel inside; it takes everything I can muster to not burst out laughing.

“You don’t see them, do you?” the woman next to me asks after we’re a few bites into our lunches. I shake my head, and she sighs, “Neither does Quintus, poor thing. It really is a shame.”

Then what the hell are we doing here?! I shove a forkful of potatoes in my mouth to keep myself from blurting out something I’ll regret.

The woman continues after a few bites of food, “You know, I was about your age—maybe a little older—when I saw my first spirit.”

“Oh, that’s . . . something,” I manage after I swallow down the half-chewed wad of potato.

“Mm-hmm,” she agrees. “I was on vacation. It was one of the old arenas—you know the one, with all the forests and caves?—and something just came over me. I guess being that close to death gave me some great connection between the living and the dead.”

That is _not okay_. I tighten my grip on my fork and stare down at the plate in front of me where I had been putting effort into actually eating. Now any desire to force myself to eat vanishes. I fight back the urge to stab this woman in the face with my fork.

“It’s not that unusual,” a man cuts in. I think his name is Gary. I don’t dare turn my eyes away from my plate as he continues, “There have been several victors who have reportedly had encounters with the supernatural within the arena, especially in their final moments. One or two even have developed the ability to communicate with the dead, too.”

And then people start guessing which victors might be the ones with these special abilities. I shoot a look at Quintus, who has remained silent but follows along with each guess, his eyes flicking back and forth between speakers. A small grin plays on his lips as the others bicker back and forth, but he doesn’t offer his insight.

At last the waiter and waitress remove the food from the table, and Quintus clears his throat.

“As rude as it is, I’m afraid that Juniper and I will have to leave now,” he tells them. He doesn’t have to say anymore. I snatch up my purse from where I had set it on the ground near my ankle and push back my chair.

“It was nice to meet you,” I say to them. It was anything but. I shoot a look at Quintus who doesn’t move nearly fast enough for my liking.

When he stands up, I follow suit, and I don’t bother to look back as we head towards the door. The staff speak briefly with Quintus who tells them to put the bill on his account, and then we head out the door.

“There had better be a good explanation for that,” I mutter to him as we step out onto the sidewalk.

He hands me a mint, and I shove it in my mouth without caring that it might mean that he plans on kissing me again. The whole affair in there has me flustered, and I am not thinking straight.

He chuckles. “Yes they are quite amusing,” he says.

I cross my arms over my chest as we walk and glare at him. “Really? You invited me out to lunch with a bunch of lunatics!”

“Yes, I would agree with that,” he says. “But they do provide some interesting company.”

“What is _wrong_ with you?” I demand between clenched teeth as I try to appear as polite as possible to any passers-by who might see us walking here together.

“Sometimes, my dear, you need to just accept the fact that you will be around people whose company you don’t prefer,” he says to me. “It happens to us all every now and again.”

“So you’re telling me that you didn’t want to be there, either?” I ask with irritation.

“It wasn’t my choice of events for today, no,” he responds. “But see, having you there made it more bearable.”

“For you,” I mumble.

“Hmm, just play a little game,” he says. “I’ve been trying to figure out the fakes. Every time I go, I change my mind.”

I dare to look at him. “You . . . go there for entertainment?” I ask.

“Not the primary purpose,” he responds. “But it’s better than counting down the minutes before I can leave. And, anyway, you didn’t need to struggle to find something to talk to me about, did you?”

I open my mouth to protest but close it again immediately. I barely had to interact with Quintus at all. As a trade-off, I had to listen to those people talk bullshit about seeing the dead on their vacations to previous arenas, but at least I didn’t have to keep Quintus entertained. I look down at the sidewalk and focus on my footsteps. Which torturous conversation would have been better?

“Just wait until you see one of their séances,” he says.

I turn and stare at him. “No,” I say. “I’m not going to that.”

He struggles to suppress the amusement as he looks me over. “I thought you liked adventure,” he says.

“No.” I cannot say it firmly enough.

“Well, then,” is all he says, and then he pauses. I slow to a stop. He nods towards the stores on the street opposite us, and I follow his gaze to the bookstore. “I trust you can find your way home from here? Unless you would like to come inside and talk literature.”

“I’ve had more than enough science fiction as it is,” I tell him. “I’ll see you later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever write a chapter and wonder how many drugs you've done? And then you remember that you don't do drugs at all? No? Yeah, totally; me neither.
> 
> But have you ever written a chapter and wanted to not name characters so badly that you decided to make them dead instead?


	28. Chapter 28

Sage comes across the District 6 female, Auburn. They stare awkwardly at each other for a few minutes that is captured in painful real time, and moments later, they sit down together to have lunch. I imagine they must’ve hit it off in the Training Center well enough that they can’t bear to just start smacking each other with weapons. They dig into their bags and pull out odds and ends which they share with each other.

“Do you think we should just start fighting after lunch?” Sage asks.

Auburn shrugs. “I guess we can,” she says. “Otherwise we can ally until we have to face the Careers.”

“I have a plan for how to tackle the Careers,” he answers. Auburn perks up, but Sage doesn’t offer further information. I remember how Pitch said that the kid has some odd ideas, and I have a dismal feeling that whatever he has planned won’t work out quite as smoothly as he hopes. Auburn’s probably better off not allying with Sage.

They don’t have much food between the two of them. Neither have been great at outdoor survival, and they haven’t been foraging for food or hunting wild boar or whatever else a couple of the other tributes have tried in order to survive. The good news is that they haven’t sustained injuries from foolish attempts to kill wildlife; the bad news is that their uniforms hang on their gaunt frames as they try to stretch each bite to last a little longer. Compared to the glorious Careers, these two dingy, emaciated kids are nothing special.

“What weapons do you have?” Auburn asks him as she licks the last crumbs off her grimy fingers.

Sage holds up a stick.

Auburn laughs. “ _That’s_ your weapon?” she asks. “Wow.”

He shrugs. “I left mine back at the bloodbath,” he admits.

Auburn digs into her bag and pulls out two knives. She offers one to him. He looks confused but reaches out and takes it from her hand.

“I’d like to not have this be _totally_ one-sided,” she says. “Besides, if you get a good hit in, I’d rather not be killed with a stick, you know?”

Sage nods. “Yeah, I get it,” he says. “Are we really doing this?”

“Why not? We’ll have to fight eventually,” the girl replies. “There are only ten of us left, I think; five are Careers.”

I don’t understand their logic by any means, but I find their interaction mesmerizing regardless. At last they stand up, stretch out their weary limbs, and assume fighting stances. I have seen what Sage can do . . . the question is what Auburn can do with her own weapon.

Neither of them makes a move, and eventually Sage lowers his knife and says, “Do you think we should count down from ten, and then we can go?”

“That works for me,” Auburn replies. “Should we count together?”

What is _wrong_ with these tributes? I want to scream at them to at least try to ally together and then fight at the very end if it’s just the two of them left. But no. They can’t hear me, and the cries of frustration back up in my throat since I can’t tear my attention away from the television.

The two of them count down from ten, and as soon as they say “ONE!” they launch at each other. Knives slash back and forth, but at first they dodge each other too well that not a single blow lands. Then their exhaustion kicks in, and Sage gets a good hit across the girl’s arm, and Auburn then slices Sage’s cheek. Back and forth. Dodging, slashing, dodging, slashing. At last Sage falls to the ground and Auburn can finally end it, but she only staggers backward.

“I can’t do it,” she pants.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sage agrees. “Killing people is hard.”

He bleeds from his cheek and his arms. A particularly good shot nicked his shoulder. Auburn looks to be pretty much in the same shape. None of the wounds are enough to kill them from blood loss or direct damage, but they will get infected soon enough and they’ll both die.

“Do you think we should ally now?” Auburn asks.

“Nah,” Sage replies. “But do you know how to get across the lava river?”

“I saw a bridge, down towards the south,” the girl tells him. “You can try that.”

Sage leans over and picks up his bag. He can’t carry it over both his shoulders, so he just swings it over the one. Then he turns the knife around and extends it to Auburn.

“Oh, you hang onto it,” she tells him. “I can’t bear to think of you out there with just a stick.”

“Thank you,” Sage says. “It’s nicer knowing that I have the protection of an actual weapon.” He tucks the knife into his belt in a way that will most likely only get him hurt later.

“I’ll see you around,” Auburn tells him. “Unless I don’t. Then I guess one or the both of us will be dead and I won’t see you around.”

“If I don’t win, I hope you do,” he replies. He then waves and heads out across the landscape back in the direction of the lava river. Auburn watches him go for several long seconds before she picks up her own bag, slips it on her back with a grimace, and heads in the opposite direction.

. . . Thus concluding the stupidest and most pointless fight in the history of the Hunger Games.

But now that it has ended, Janice Lovely and Caligula Klora “aww” at the interaction and discuss what this means for the two tributes. They speculate on why it even happened at all, and the way they talk reminds me of how my literature teachers would bullshit meaning for inane pieces of writing. I can’t stand hearing their voices anymore even if I want to keep track of where Sage is going, so I flip to channel 35 and listen to a violin concerto while staring at still images of birds flying across the sky.

Elm and I eat dinner together. I have no idea where Pitch is, and I’m a half minute away from going down to the mentor room to check on him if it weren’t for the fact that Elm begins to drink the moment he throws himself into his seat at the table.

“How’s Wisteria?” I ask as he finishes his second glass.

He shrugs. “Still hanging on,” he answers. “I should thank you for last night. . . .”

“But . . . ?”

The avox sets a third glass in front of him. I wonder how one makes the avoxes stop bringing him alcohol.

He shrugs again. “I had everything under control,” he responds.

I groan. “Elm, you have a major problem,” I tell him. “You were completely wasted and you were doing _nothing_ to help your tribute. That was having everything under control?”

Elm stares down at his reflection in the alcohol and I wonder what he sees—himself or the glistening beverage. He lifts the glass to his lips and finishes it within moments. Although I grow used to seeing him drink so much, it still nauseates me to think of drinking a beverage—any beverage—at that speed. I don’t think I could even chug water like that. He sets the glass down with a clunk on the table.

“If I stop now, I’ll have withdrawals,” he tells me. “Would make me a worse mentor. I’ll cut back once Wisteria—once the Hunger Games end.”

 _Once Wisteria dies._ The unspoken words linger between us. We both know it’s inevitable, but neither of us dares say it.

“She spilled the beans about having a kid,” I comment.

Elm rolls his eyes. He taps his empty glass absently on the table. “She put up a pretty big fight about it, and then she just goes and blabs about it herself,” he says. “Figures.”

“She panicked,” I say. “Been there, done that. Then again, I didn’t murder my allies in cold blood because they made a relatively rational decision of self-preservation.”

(No, I murdered people for stupider reasons. _At least_ , I tell myself, _they were not my allies._ )

Elm snorts. The avox brings him three more drinks, and I wonder how many drinks total he has during the day. Does he only drink at dinner and then sleep it off? Does he hit up the alcohol table in the mentoring room?

“She’s bought herself a few more hours, at least,” he mumbles more to himself than to me. And then, to my horror, he drinks all three glasses of alcohol in quick succession. When he sees me staring at him open-mouthed he only says, “Doesn’t matter if I space it out. At least I can get on with the evening.”

The avox returns and collects the glasses. A second avox brings more.

“No, Elm! This is insane! Stop it!” I plead. Tears brim in my eyes. He’s killing himself. And he’ll get Wisteria killed in the process.

He laughs, but it’s completely devoid of humor. “Don’t worry; this is nothing,” he says. “They deliver to my bedroom, you know? Now I guess I just don’t care enough to bother hiding it.”

I shake my head. I can’t believe this.

He looks at me for several long seconds and then he says, “I’ll take it to my room where I won’t ruin your evening.”

“That won’t help anything,” I snap but he already stands up and picks up two glasses. He says nothing more as he leaves the dining room and heads into the hallway.

I sit at the table and stare stupidly at the one glass of alcohol he left behind. I’m tempted to pick it up and drink it. I’ve never had much alcohol before, and I know that one cup will leave me a bit tipsy. Maybe that’ll—before I can think about it too much, I stand up sharply and smack the glass off the table. It falls to the floor. I go to Pitch’s bedroom.

Pitch doesn’t return. Hours pass. I try to occupy myself with books and not worry too much about him. His tribute was just in a fight and he’s probably stressed out about it all. At one point, I turn off the light and curl up on my side but I can’t fall asleep so I turn the light back on and crack open the book again. This time, I fall into the pages and disappear into the fiction.

It’s nearly 3:00 AM when Pitch returns. He’s dressed up a little nicer than normal, and I realize that he had a “date.” He peels off his outer clothes before climbing into bed, the scent of pine perfume still clinging to him. I clench my teeth and try not to think about the disgusting woman who demands his company.

I set down my book on the nightstand, flick off the lights, and curl up with him. He struggles to get comfortable, and then once it seems like he’s done tossing and turning, he kicks off the blankets and then pulls them back on himself again. He stands up, heads to the bathroom, and closes the door. Moments later, the shower starts running. I wait in the dark for him to return, the entire time wondering what the hell is going on. He normally doesn’t return home so . . . weird. When he reemerges from the bathroom and settles into bed again, I contemplate asking him if everything is okay. But it’s clearly not, and he’s not volunteering any information, so I just pull him against me and run my fingers through his hair until he drifts into a quiet sleep.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is messed up, yo.  
> tl;dr at the end.

Morning of the sixth day, and Pitch doesn’t leave the room early. Instead I lay quietly in his embrace as I wonder if I should wake him. At last I decide that he needs as much sleep as he can get, and if anything weird happens, the monitoring device on his wrist will let him know. But as I slip out from underneath his arm, he begins to stir.

“What time is it?” he mumbles. I don’t have a chance to answer before he sits up quickly as though he just remembered something important. He’s out of bed before me and staggers over to the closet to get dressed for the day.

I blink as I watch him for a moment, but then I grab my own clothes and head to the bathroom to change.

Pitch doesn’t leave to go down to the mentoring room when I flop onto the couch to turn on coverage.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him when I find him pacing back and forth between the sitting room and the dining room.

He rubs his cheek and mutters something to himself before trying to answer my question but falling silent.

Okay, this is nuts. I push myself off the couch and stand in front of him so that he’s no longer able to pace and has to actually address the fact that I’m here and won’t go away. He stares at me as though realizing for the first time this morning that I exist.

“I-I tried to get him sponsorships,” he begins, but it sounds as though he’s starting the story in the middle. He stops, clears his throat, and tries again: “Yesterday after Sage’s, um, fight. He was injured, so I decided that I’d get him money for a medical kit. He got some money, of course, but not enough because prices increase and—and you know, how they do—so I went to her because she is always willing to give me money for sponsorships in exchange for—anyhow, when I got there and explained what I wanted she said that she would sponsor him if I, um, if I broke off our marriage.”

I raise my eyebrows. Well, the Capitol made quick work of screwing us over. My heart thumps and I clench my fists.

“What did you do?” I ask, trying not to sound too pissed off that our marriage has been forcibly terminated before we could even go through with it. That these people are controlling our lives _yet again_ in whatever way they want.

“She said that, um, that she couldn’t bear to have to share me,” he mutters, not directly answering my question. He runs a hand through his hair. He can’t meet my eyes. “So I, um, I told her no. I couldn’t . . . I mean, I just told her that I wasn’t going to break off our marriage, and she said that she couldn’t sponsor Sage. The end. So she, um, she kicked me out.”

I freeze. Everything within me goes cold as I stare at Pitch and try to understand what he just told me. He actually . . . turned down sponsorship for a tribute—turned down getting that tribute help—so that we could get married? That’s . . . that’s messed up.

And yet, I’m kind of flattered. Which is also messed up.

Pitch is shaking. Visibly. He trembles as he stands here before me fumbling through this story. Yet I can’t reach out a hand and hold him steady because I’m so cold that my body’s frozen and I can’t move.

“Juniper, I, um, I . . . I don’t know,” he stammers. “I guess I was so . . . Fuck, I can’t even talk. I just tried to make a decision. For myself. For us. And she was going to take it away. The one decision. And. Um. I said no. And now Sage is going to get infected and die. Because of me. Is he—”

He looks past me towards the television. I turn and stare at the glowing screen before looking back at Pitch. “Yeah, he’s fine,” I confirm. “I’m sure the cuts will heal on their own.” But probably not because this is the Hunger Games and Sage is more intrigued with getting over that lava river than taking care of himself.

Pitch lets out a breath and turns back to me. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” I ask. “It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” he mumbles. “I just . . . . I’m going to stay here and watch with you today, if you’re okay with that. I can’t go. To the mentor room, I mean. I can’t.”

“That’s fine,” I say. I force myself to break through the ice that holds me in place and take his hand in mine. The sudden warmth gives me enough strength to lead him into the sitting room where we take our seats on the couch. I move into him and rest my head on his shoulder as we watch Sage wander through the jungle. He doesn’t seem to have a plan, but at least a couple of his lacerations have started to heal. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just being hopeful.

“There are other ways to get sponsors,” Pitch mumbles. “Especially once he finds that bridge. He shouldn’t be too far.”

I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or to himself, so I don’t reply. We watch Sage amble through the forests without a clear path. He isn’t too far from the bridge, and he’s going in the right general direction. Since it has been his goal to get over the lava river since he first found it, Pitch is probably right that people will send in sponsorship for a job well done. For as weird as Sage is, the fight yesterday with Auburn appeared to have raised his likeability with the Capitol viewers if the conversations of Janice and Caligula mean anything; I’m sure that people will be more than happy to throw him a reward for his hard work.

Pitch’s phone rings, and we both nearly fall off the couch at the sudden jarring noise. “It’s just my phone,” he mutters to me as though trying to reassure me that everything is okay, but I know he speaks more for his own sake than mine. He pulls the phone out of his pocket and presses a few buttons.

“Hello, Pitch?” comes the familiar voice of a woman.

“Yes,” he replies cautiously.

“Are you watching the Hunger Games right now?” she asks.

Pitch hesitates before answering. “Yes.”

“Good.”

The phone disconnects, and before either of us have time to contemplate what the hell that call was about, Sage steps on something—some sort of switch hidden beneath the plant material on the floor of the jungle—and a large blade spins out from the trees and slices directly through his neck.

His head topples off his shoulders and thumps onto the ground.

Neither of us can say anything. I sit with my hands pressed over my mouth. Pitch doesn’t utter a word. I can’t move. I can’t talk. Can’t scream or cry or yell or curse or anything.

My teeth chatter. My body trembles.

This is what happens when you go against their wishes.

Against their demands.

I close my eyes but only see the image of Sage’s decapitated corpse falling silently to the ground.

My eyelids snap open and I force myself to lower my hands and turn to Pitch.

He looks like he’s about to say something, but he can’t push the words out of his mouth.

Neither of us can express what’s going through our minds. I lean into Pitch, after a few moments he extends his arms around me, and we slump together on the couch and stare dumbly at the screen. Time passes. Who knows how much. We lay there and try to process what happened but we both know. Pitch told them no. And Sage was killed. There is nothing more to process.

“I should have—I should have just done what she wanted,” Pitch mumbles. “I am an idiot. I just . . . I just thought that maybe. . . .”

I sit up and look at Pitch. He can’t meet my eyes.

“After telling you that you couldn’t say no to Quintus. . . .”

And he’ll never stop beating himself up over this. How can he? I don’t even know what to say to comfort him because there is nothing that can possibly make this situation better. Some kid is dead because he didn’t give that woman what she wanted, and now he can’t undo it.

This is worse than Laurel Shrubsprout. The time that Pitch had a breakdown and tried to kill himself. Laurel was ripped apart by a muttation, and Pitch blamed himself for not being a better mentor. That hadn’t been his fault. But this. . . . I don’t place any blame on Pitch for what happened, but I know that it was his decision that lead directly to Sage’s death. If he handled Laurel’s demise so poorly that he tried to kill himself a second time, what the hell is going to happen now that there is a direct causal relationship between Pitch’s decision and Sage’s death?

“Pitch. . . ?”

“I shouldn’t have done that. I should have. I don’t know. Just broken off the marriage. I guess. I didn’t want to. . . .” he rambles. I watch as he stares through the television. His mouth moves and the words come out, but it’s clear that he doesn’t really know what he’s saying. “Why the hell they care about us. I don’t know that. Maybe we have too much freedom. Maybe we’re—”

“Pitch!” I grab him by the collar and give him a small shake, just to get his attention. When at last he turns his eyes towards me and I see a bit of clarity, I say, “Pitch. Don’t leave me, please? I need you.”

 _Don’t leave me._ In all senses of the phrase. Physically. Mentally. I don’t care.

Pitch nods slightly. Barely. But he heard me. His eyes shift back to the television where they show a replay of Sage’s death.

Neither of us can turn away. They’ve played it a dozen times now, and every time I feel just as sick as the first. But they will make sure that we see this over and over and over again because that’s what they do when tributes die in the Hunger Games, especially when things are otherwise boring. What’s more exciting than seeing a fifteen-year-old kid get his head sliced off his shoulders?

Suddenly I find myself thinking about that little girl, Neptune. Did she cheer when she saw this?

“We’ll have to leave soon,” Pitch says. He clears his throat.

Right. The Hunger Games are over for him, at least in the sense that he no longer needs to be here in the Training Center. Therefore he is expected to return to his apartment and wait until the Hunger Games end and he is required to go to the Presentation of the Victor and the party at the Presidential Palace. That could be mere days or it could take a week or two. There are nine tributes left, so a third of the original twenty-four must die before we are released from duty for another year. And as we wait, there will be interviews. They’ll love to know about Sage’s death, and they’ll dig into Pitch and tear him apart just to have the smallest bit of information to cling to.

I reach over for the remote and turn off the television. Then I move back against him, and we lay on the couch in silence until the weight of everything that has happened makes breathing unbearable.

It’s early afternoon by the time we manage to pull ourselves together enough to face the world outside the Training Center. We pack up our belongings—which really is just my books—and leave them for the avoxes to deliver to my apartment. I can barely think well enough to gather them together, and eventually I have to assume that I collected them all because I can’t spend another minute inside this claustrophobic building. I wait for Pitch to finish his shower, and then we head down to the lobby.

The Training Center has many exits, but most of the time we use the main one at the front. Once your tribute dies, however, you don’t want to be hounded by the press, so you use one of the side exits and hope that nobody finds you. Pitch takes my hand and we head outside; to our relief, no one pops out of the bushes to capture the moment that a victor loses his status as mentor for another year. We take a roundabout route to the street and hail a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr - In the morning, Pitch reveals to Juniper that he went to "her" (Martha) to get sponsorship for Sage. Martha told him that she would sponsor Sage only if Pitch broke off his and Juniper's engagement. Pitch told her no, and he did not get any sponsorships. This upsets him greatly, and he stays with Juniper to watch the Hunger Games. After they've been watching for awhile, he receives a phone call asking if he's watching. When he says yes, the call ends and then Sage gets decapitated. This is obviously quite distressing for Juniper and Pitch. They are upset. After being upset, they leave the Training Center per protocol since Pitch's tribute is now dead. (Also note that there are vague-ish references to Pitch's previous suicide attempts in this chapter.)


	30. Chapter 30

Rather than going to my apartment, Pitch takes us to a mountain on the outskirts of town. We have been here before once: last year after Rosa had died. That had been in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep and no one bothered to come out to this neatly-maintained nature trail that wound up the side of the mountain. Now, during the day, a few people mill about. Some are close enough to the bottom that you can make out their features, but many are scattered far enough away that they’re just little dots of color.

I can see why Pitch likes this place; compared to most areas within the Capitol, this one is abandoned. It’s too far away from televisions to have continuous coverage of the arena, so most people opt to stay closer to the city where a stroll through the park will lead you to a television screen with only a short few minutes’ walk. The people here are engrossed in their outing, and few, if any, notice the cab pull up and drop us off.

Pitch’s hand immediately finds mine, and we begin our trek along the base of the trail towards the mountain. There are few trees around here; perhaps we’re above the tree line, I don’t know. But the mountain rises up above us in a palette of browns and greys and greens. I wonder if Isolde has tried to capture this with her camera. And then I remember that I probably shouldn’t care what Isolde does at this point.

“Do you come out here whenever your tribute dies?” I ask him as we make our way across a flat stretch of ground before the path starts grading upward.

“Sometimes,” he replies, and says nothing more about it.

Back home in District 7, sometimes Pitch and I slip out of the house and head off into the woods where we have the freedom to spend time with each other and talk without the careful ears of my parents honed into everything we say. But the funny thing is that no matter how much I feel like I have to discuss with Pitch when we leave the house, it almost always vanishes once we disappear into the forests and the trees envelope us. Today is no different. We may not have trees to hide us from the rest of the world, but this trail has the same effect as the ones at home. I have neither questions nor comments for our situation despite the thousands of things throbbing in my mind minutes ago.

Gravel crunches under our shoes, and in the distance I hear the laughter of a small group of people as the pose for a picture together on a large rock. They exist in their own little world that does not involve us, and I am fine with that.

Neither Pitch nor I brought water; we didn’t anticipate coming out here after all. But we stop on occasion to catch our breath or to admire the view. When facing towards the city, we see the great expanse of the Capitol. Thousands upon thousands of buildings. Roads, paths, trails. Evidence of the great multitude of people who keep the Hunger Games in existence. But then the path curves around the mountain and we see nothing but untouched land: mountains, forests, valleys. The world that exists outside of the Capitol’s disturbed paradise. We stop here and sit on a large boulder to admire the wide expanse of green. And here we can pretend—if only for a minute—that we are far away from the clutches of the Capitol.

Pitch leans back, propping himself up on his elbows, and stares off into the distance. I sit cross-legged next to him and wonder why the Capitol stopped their hunger for land right here at this spot—and why they allow their citizens to see what lies beyond their world, if only in this one brief place.

“We probably can’t get married,” Pitch says at last.

I turn and look at him. “Why not?”

He lets out a breath. “Who else will they kill if she’s adamant that we shouldn’t be together?”

I didn’t think of that. I figured that since they’d offed our tribute, that was it, and things were over. Uneasiness slinks through me when I realize how naïve I am to think that they punish us once and let us get away with whatever we want.

“This is stupid,” I mutter. “Do all victors have to deal with crap like this?”

“Sometimes,” he answers. “Sometimes worse. Depends on the situation.”

I pick up a small rock and heave it down the side of the mountain.

“Well. Even if we can’t get married, I’m going to stay with you,” I tell him firmly. I snatch up another small rock, but Pitch sits up and grabs my arm before I can release it. From somewhere off to the side, I hear voices, and moments later, three people emerge on the trail as the head back the way we had come. They either don’t see us or don’t recognize us, but I hold my breath as they pass so that I don’t alert them to our presence.

When they leave, Pitch releases my arm, and I drop the rock to the side.

“I wasn’t aiming for them,” I tell him just to clarify that I wasn’t actually taking my anger out on these random passers-by. “I didn’t hear them.”

“I know,” he responds. He picks up the pebble and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger. “Were you serious, though? About if we don’t get married.”

“Yeah. As I said, I’m tired of them telling us what to do, and I’m tired of them fucking up our plans just because they feel like it,” I tell him as I snatch up the rock from his hands and throw it as far as I can.

“We are so stupid,” he mutters. “We’re going to get everyone killed.”

“What’s the alternative?” I ask.

“Not staying together,” he responds.

“But are we _really_ together?” I say as I pick up another pebble. “So we hold hand sometimes, and we sleep in the same bed on occasion.”

“Sounds like a relationship to me,” he answers.

I hesitate for a second and look at him. I almost feel like I can’t ask him this, but his comment makes me curious anyhow: “Have you been in a relationship? Like a real consensual one?”

“Not since high school,” he replies. “No, wait, there was one. . . . After the Hunger Games, that first year. Didn’t work out.”

I frown out at the forests below us. The year that he found out that he’d have to perform sexual favors for the Capitol citizens in order to keep his family alive. Well shit, that’s depressing.

Then he asks, “Have you had any friendships?”

I furrow my brow and turn back to him. “What?!”

“Just wondering, because this isn’t how they normally go, either,” he tells me, and I think I see the faintest hint of a smile, but it vanishes within seconds. “I don’t know what we have, Juniper. It’s not a friendship, it’s not a relationship. And I don’t care. So even if we can’t stay together—not officially—I’d still like to be with you.”

Pitch is right: we’re going to get everyone killed. How the hell would this work out? I don’t think anyone cares too much here in the Capitol—there could be any number of reasons why I spend time with him, maybe—but once we get back to District 7, we’d have to keep “us” off the radar from anybody who might be trying to ensure that we’re not secretly getting married or enjoying life or whatever else they don’t want us to do. And since most of my time is spent at university with what little time we have together already monitored thanks to parental concern, we’re going to have to maneuver extremely carefully.

“I could kill her,” I mumble.

“Don’t ever say that,” Pitch snaps at me.

I look down at the pebble in my hand and stare intently at the little rock. I know I’m being foolish and too loose with my words. But if that woman were dead, then Pitch and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. Not about out tributes getting killed or our family members being offed or anything.

“Juniper,” he says, and he touches my jaw and guides my chin up so that I have to look at him. “Don’t say that.”

I pull away from him. “I know,” I tell him quietly. “I won’t. . . .” _But I could_ , I think. If I didn’t value my own life, or the lives of people I loved, then I would do it. Yet I know that they’d figure out who it was and I’d be punished, and at that point, what would be the benefit of killing her to begin with if it resulted in no gain?

“I shouldn’t have told her no. Sage would still be alive, and it’s not like it would change our current position right now,” I hear him say. Once again, I don’t know if I’m the intended audience or if he’s just berating himself for the situation.

I study him for a second before saying anything. His grey eyes, now illuminated with the natural sunlight, hold so much exhaustion and pain. His cheeks are pale, and his face a little thinner than normal, and I know that I’m not the only person who’s having trouble stomaching meals.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you told her no,” I say.

He furrows his brow and his eyes darken.

“I mean, I’m not happy that Sage died nor do I think his death was no big deal, but I guess . . . I don’t know if this makes sense, but they don’t get told no enough,” I explain. “And isn’t that why we’re still in the same place we’ve been for the past hundred and fifty years? Because nobody tells them no?”

“I hardly think that this is going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things,” he says flatly.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “But maybe—”

“’Maybe’ nothing,” he cuts me off. “Sage is dead because of me.”

“What if he didn’t die because of you?” I suggest. “What if it was just a well-timed event? She knew what he was walking into and decided to blame you?”

“They can turn those traps on and off as they see fit,” he tells me. “And they wanted it to be on right at that time. Otherwise it would have been more beneficial to let the audience see him finally reach the bridge he wanted so badly, and then kill him off if he didn’t do anything too impressive after that. Juniper, stop trying to make me feel better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” I say. “I mean it: I’m glad that you told her no.”

He shakes his head. “I worry for you sometimes,” he admits. “You are much too eager to fight.”

I snort at that. “I’m a victor. Of course I’m eager to fight,” I say.

“Juniper,” he warns.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to try anything,” I assure him. “Not after today. . . .”

I look out across the trees again and squint into the far-off horizon where the mountains begin to blur together. In some ways, it reminds me of home with the never-ending forests stretched out into the infinite. But it’s not. The air is thinner here, the trees different. They say it snows here in the winter, and I wonder if the snow-covered forests that surround the Capitol would look like the same snow-covered forests back home.

“Do you ever wonder if there are people who live in between?” I ask Pitch.

“In between?”

“You know, in between the different districts,” I say. “All the maps I’ve seen have gaps in between so that the districts don’t touch each other. . . . And I’ve always wondered what exactly those places look like.”

Pitch shakes his head. “I think you read too many books,” he answers.

“C’mon, you’ve never been curious?” I ask.

He watches me intently, and I know that he’s trying to figure me out. I wait impatiently for him to finish his assessment.

“Of course I’ve been curious,” he says. “But I doubt that there are people living between. I think somebody would have noticed.”

“Maybe the Capitol knows about them all. . . .” I say.

“So there are people out there . . . living in the wilderness between districts . . . the Capitol knows about them but they don’t care?” Pitch asks. I hear the skepticism in his voice, but also the amusement as the tension eases ever so slightly.

“You make it sound so weird,” I say. “But I mean, who knows? Maybe they have some sort of purpose, like they, I don’t know, maintain the roads for the government employees who travel around, I don’t know. Or maybe they live there separate from Panem and the Capitol fears them so they let them stay there without interfering.”

“You have a wild imagination,” he responds. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, but now fixes me with a curious look. I frown at him.

“What?” I ask. “The Capitol keeps so many things secret from us, why not this?”

But he doesn’t seem to care about the discussion anymore. His hand goes to my cheek and he strokes it briefly before he leans in and kisses me. I kiss him back without hesitation because I suddenly realize that despite the fact that this is an absolutely terrible time—or maybe _because_ this is a terrible time—I want him. And I don’t want some damned Capitol woman to take him away from me because he is the only reason that I’ve been able to remain sane since I returned home from the arena. I lean into him and he pulls me closer.

When his lips leave mine, I say, “Good spontaneity.”

He exhales sharply. “Oh shut up,” he says before he kisses me again.

A sound down the trail catches my attention, and I break away from him just as a few hikers turn the corner and enter into our line of sight. They might not be the type of people to rush to the press with the latest gossip, but we can’t take our chances. Any other day might’ve been okay, but not when Pitch’s tribute was just killed and our relationship (possibly?) officially ended. Despite this, neither of us try to move away from each other, and as soon as the hikers leave, I settle in next to him and place my head on his shoulder.

_So much for being just friends._


	31. Chapter 31

They schedule Pitch an interview for the next morning, allowing him a whole 23 hours and 26 minutes to grieve before pulling him into the spotlight.

“I don’t know what they want to interview your for,” I say to him as he gets ready in the bathroom. I still haven’t moved from my bed, and I know that I’ll have to throw something together so that I can accompany him to the hotel that they’ve chosen to grill the mentors of the dead tributes.

“I’ve already told you—” he starts.

“Yeah, yeah. I mean what they’re going to ask you,” I say. “It’s not like you know the exact velocity of cranial descent.”

Pitch appears in the doorway and stares at me. He wears presentable clothing for the interview, but his lips are flecked with toothpaste. He grabs the toothbrush out of his mouth and says, “Not funny, Juniper.”

“I never said it was,” I retort.

He rolls his eyes, sticks the toothbrush in his mouth, and steps back into the bathroom. I force myself out of bed and find some clothes of my own before heading off to the bathroom in one of the spare rooms to get ready for the day.

Neither of us have been able to stomach food since yesterday, and it’s weird not having him nag me to eat. After the interview, we’re going to have to do something, otherwise one of us (or maybe both) will pass out from hunger.

Pitch waits for me in the living room. I grab my purse and the two of us head out the door. I don’t know where our relationship really stands at this point, both in the sense that I don’t know what we’re “allowed” to do, nor do I know what I want to do, so I don’t take his hand as I normally would in the face of an oncoming interview. Heaven knows if that Martha woman is having Pitch stalked. Instead I simply climb into the cab when he opens the door and gestures me inside, and wait for him to follow. The ride to the hotel is silent; whatever I want to say isn’t appropriate for cab talk, and it probably isn’t appropriate for anywhere the Capitol can hear me. I glance at Pitch every now and again, but he’s lost in his own world.

When we arrive at the hotel, Pitch gives me strict instructions to stay out of the way. I hate abandoning him like this, but I know that he’s right—this isn’t my interview and it will not benefit either of us if I’m involved. I know that it’s only a matter of time until they call me for one with the news of our (now-terminated) engagement, but right now they want to draw out the details of Sage’s death, and I have no involvement in that. So I take a chair in a hallway and tell Pitch that I’ll be waiting here for him. He gives me a forced smile as a reply and then heads down the corridor towards the interview room.

People wander up and down the corridor, but I busy myself with my cell phone like there is something great on there that absorbs my attention. There’s not. I just sit here watching the clock and wondering how the hell time passes so slowly in these sorts of situations. But at least nobody bothers me.

At long last, Pitch reemerges. He looks a bit frazzled, but I probably wouldn’t have thought so if I didn’t know him so well. When he approaches, I bounce to my feet and head down the hall with him.

“How’d it go?” I ask.

“As expected,” he replies. In other words, it was shitty and there was nothing he could do. It’s not until we are out in the courtyard of the hotel that he adds, “They want another interview with the both of us tomorrow. To talk about our engagement.”

I let out a breath. “I thought it didn’t exist anymore,” I say quietly.

“I . . . have to find out,” he replies.

“What does that mean?” I ask, but I think I already know. When Pitch doesn’t answer, the anxiety within me grows stronger. We cross the courtyard and exit through a stone arch that leads onto the street. Once again, we wait for a cab.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Um, no, and I also noticed that you didn’t answer my question,” I say.

“No, I didn’t,” he answered. “Let’s talk about it over breakfast.”

Pitch directs the driver to drop us off at a small restaurant where we order our food to go and take it to the park across the street. Here we find a little river that winds through a copse of trees, and the two of us sit down on the sandy bank and set our cardboard boxes and beverages on the ground in front of us.

We aren’t far enough removed from the city to think that our conversation wouldn’t be monitored, so we have to guard our speech carefully, just as we would most places. When we spoke yesterday on the side of that small mountain, we had the most freedom we’ve ever had within the boundaries of the Capitol, but I can’t get used to that.

“You’re going back to her?” I ask as I open up the cardboard container. This time I made sure to choose something that wouldn’t overwhelm my stomach and stuck with eggs and toast. However, they gave me way too much food; I don’t know how many eggs they think the average person eats in one sitting, but it sure as hell isn’t this many.

“I have no choice,” he says. “If they’re going to interview us tomorrow and they want to know details about our relationship, then I need to know where we stand.”

I snort, and he looks at me, so I now have to explain: “It seems weird. Like if we’re talking about ‘our relationship’ you don’t think a third party has to be consulted.”

He nods carefully as he watches me for a few long seconds, and then he turns to his own food and pops open the lid.

“We’re victors. Things work differently,” he says.

“Yeah, so you’ve told me,” I say. I take a bite of my eggs and swallow without chewing; they’re so damned rich that I’m contemplating whether it was a smart idea to get these or if I’m just going to throw them back up. Lowering my fork, I ask, “Did you ever think that this is what it was like for victors?”

“What do you mean?” he asks in between bites.

“Before you went to the Hunger Games, did you think that victory would be this crazy?” I ask, careful to phrase my question in a manner that didn’t outright shit on what a wonderful life the Capitol has given us. Of course that they know that we hate what they’ve done to us, but they don’t want to hear us say it.

“Vesa was the most recent District 7 victor to my win,” Pitch says. “I would have been . . . thirteen at that time. Her victory was certainly painted as a great honor, and they made a big deal of it, of course. They said she was set for life and would want for nothing. It was hard to tell what to make of it. But no, I wouldn’t have expected this.”

They do the same thing with every victor, at least to some extent: there’s always the illusion of honor and glory. But once the Presentation of the Victor and the subsequent interviews end, there’s nothing holding that victor up anymore. All the “Capitol magic” vanishes the moment they return to their home district, and then they’re on their own to keep up appearance. As a kid, we saw footage of the other victors’ celebrations and return home, and what Pitch said is true: they were always made out to be happy and exciting things. But it wasn’t until I was a victor myself and struggled through it all that I realized the Capitol couldn’t erase the haunted expressions in new victors’ faces in the interviews and events that followed their return to District 7. We were under the influence of stylists and crews with the best cameras and lighting and sets that the Capitol could afford—but without that synthetic support, the horrors of what we had done was plainly etched on our faces. When I was a kid, I didn’t see it; I wonder if others didn’t, either, or if I was just too young and stupid to see that transformation. When I was older, I understood that people couldn’t walk away from the Hunger Games unscathed, yet I still didn’t understand the depth to which the event destroyed us. It took seeing my own reflection to realize that everything after victory was not okay.

“I never thought that things were so . . . predetermined,” I say. “If I saw people marrying, I would have assumed they loved each other. If I saw people hanging out, I would have assumed that they enjoyed each other’s company. I didn’t think that there was such a great outside influence.”

“There are different expectations put on us,” he says carefully. I look up from my food to find him watching me, and with the look he gives, I know that I’m edging into inappropriate territory. Which is just an example of the ways I didn’t think our lives would be so rigidly monitored. Obviously you can’t start talking about how much you hated the Hunger Games, but to not be able to sit on a river and enjoy a conversation. . . . That’s beyond what I would have thought.

I turn back to my food and instruct myself to continue eating without dwelling too much on my thoughts. That doesn’t work too well—my brain only wants to delve into the complexities of being a victor—so I at least make myself sit here quietly and not say anything that will get either Pitch or myself in trouble.

At long last, I can’t bear keeping quiet any longer, so I say, “Do you think she’ll let us get married? Or do you think she was serious about not wanting us together?”

Pitch lowers his fork. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never . . . I mean, I’ve had tributes die because of politics, as I’ve told you, but I’ve never had one die as direct punishment because of something I did. I don’t know what to expect.”

Damned woman. It’s already a given that she’s a psychopath, but I’m not sure if she’s actually jealous of our relationship or if she just wants to yank Pitch around because it’s not like us being married is going to stop her from requesting his company. All things considered, Pitch is holding himself together pretty well right now. I’d be a miserable mess if it were me in his position.

And then it occurs to me, he’s _not_ doing well. He’s just damned good at faking it. It’s the hesitation before he makes a movement, the way he averts his eyes to his food, how he disappears into his own mind so easily. . . . The little things you’d miss if you blinked or got distracted.

I don’t know how to handle it. I can only say so many things or try to reassure him so many times. . . . My chest aches as I watch him pick at his food where he has either given up trying to eat or eaten his fill before finishing his meal, either entirely uncharacteristic for him.

When we walk back to the cab, I slip my hand into his.


	32. Chapter 32

One thing that I never thought I’d have to deal with in my life: watching my fiancé-friend-ex-? get dressed for a date with someone else knowing that he will have to whore himself out to maybe see if she’ll be benevolent enough to let us get married or at least not kill anyone else. Add that to the list of things you never knew that victors did.

I watch from the couch as he slips on shoes and bends down to tie the laces.

“I’ll see you later,” he says when he catches me staring.

“Alright,” I say. “Call me if you need me to bail you out or whatever.”

He nods, but I see that he’s not here with me right now. He goes through the motions of tying his shoe, of grabbing his jacket, of saying goodbye . . . but he’s already off in another place.

The door closes behind him, and I am alone.

I can’t distract myself. I don’t care about any of the gazillion books in my apartment (and I can’t find the _one_ I had wanted to read, either), I don’t have any desire to turn on the television, and I literally own nothing but furniture and literature in this entire damned place. I can’t just call up Esther or Isolde and be like, “Yeah, I know I haven’t spoken to you guys in awhile slash maybe we didn’t part on the best terms, but I’m just trying to kill time until Pitch comes home from having sex with someone who has the power to kill tributes in the arena.”

But on that thought, I do wonder about Isolde. . . .

No, I can’t really spare the brain power in order to add more chaos and anger to my thoughts. I don’t know for what reasons she did what she did, but that’s secondary in my life right now.

 _Besides,_ I think, _her tribute is still alive. She has to focus on taking care of her._

And then I find myself turning on the television anyhow because I have no clue what has happened in the past twenty-four hours. Thankfully things have been slow, and the announcers re-hash all sorts of dumb things: an argument between the Careers, Wisteria’s mystery baby, Auburn’s pitiful attempts to make a snare (though the tears she’s been shedding on-and-off since she saw Sage’s face in the sky don’t help), the District 5 male’s gaping wound from trying to fight a boar, the District 10 male’s mental breakdown. With only four non-Career tributes left, they’re going to start routing them into each others’ paths in order to give the Careers opportunity to narrow down their opponents. But not tonight. Tonight they appear to be content to allow the tributes to keep to their own devices.

I almost wish _something_ would happen so that it would distract me from what’s going on elsewhere in the Capitol right now, and then I feel sick for even thinking that.

I check my phone, but I’m not surprised to find that I have no messages.

I try to force myself to sleep, but it doesn’t work.

Around midnight I make myself dinner. But then I realize that I’m not hungry, so I stuff it in the fridge.

At last the door opens. I try not to look like a desperate dog eagerly awaiting her master’s return, but I’m sure that’s the impression I give anyhow. Keeping a low profile, I lay on the couch with the book unopened in my hands and watch as Pitch staggers in.

“Can I ask how it went or do you need to go punch something?” I ask.

Pitch jumps. “Fuck, you scared me,” he mutters, and then he heads into the bedroom.

I’m guessing that he needs to go punch something.

After awhile, I wonder if he just went to bed and doesn’t care that I waited up to find out what happened, and then I have to remind myself that “what happened” was probably really personal and I’m not entirely privileged to knowing just because I asked, even if the outcome eventually affects me. I try to suppress the irritation but end up just staring at the ceiling and letting it fester within me.

Eventually Pitch returns. He showered and removed the foul pine perfume scent, but it didn’t do enough to relieve the exhaustion that is etched heavily in his expression. When he sits down, I move closer to him and wiggle into his arms. He rests his cheek against my head.

“She’s okay if we get married,” he says at last.

I exhale.

“What’s the catch?” I ask.

Pitch kisses me on the top of my head. Like that’s an answer.

I guess it is. . . . Obviously he doesn’t want to tell me whatever the catch is.

“Pitch,” I say as I pull away from him slightly so I can look at him. “What’s the catch?”

“Can you not be content knowing that we get what we want?” he asks. His eyes hold exhaustion so deep, the likes of which I have never seen before. Not every Hunger Games is the same; every year brings a fresh new hell and some years it’s easier to bear than other years. This is not one of the easy years.

I shake my head. No, I can’t be content. Not while knowing that Pitch is going to have to repay this somehow in some manner. And is it really “getting what we want” if there are conditions associated with it?

He pushes my hair behind my ear and assesses me carefully. His eyes run over my face, but I don’t flinch even though I know he’s trying to figure out if he can tell me the truth right now. Not because he doesn’t trust me but because the truth is far too heavy for a person to bear, and he doesn’t know if burdening me with it will spread it out between us or only shift it all on my shoulders.

“I am not allowed to disobey again,” he says at last.

“Or else?” I ask.

“Juniper. . . .” he warns.

I stare at him. I am not backing down.

He hesitates, and it takes him a few attempts before he’s able to get the words out of his mouth. “Or else she kills you,” he says.

My stomach sloshes with fear. This time there is no anger to burn it away. Just fear. I stare hard down at my hands.

“But Juniper?” he says. When I don’t look at him—I can’t look at him—he lifts my chin up so that our eyes meet. “Juniper, I promise you, I will not let that happen.”

“Okay,” I say.

Pitch’s lips twitch. “That’s it, just ‘okay’? After finding out that if I make one wrong move, you die?”

“Is that funny?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t really know anything.”

“I know that feeling,” I say heavily. “But, um, I trust you. I don’t trust her—I think she’s looking for any excuse to torture you—but I trust you.”

“Thank you,” he says, and a flicker of relief passes through his eyes, vanishing moments later as the heaviness once more takes over. I lean my head against his shoulder and close my eyes. Such a disgusting, twisted world we live in.

“Pitch? Thank you. For talking to her.”

He nods. “Now, do you want to stay up to prepare for the interview, or do you want to go to bed and wing it?”

“Let’s wing it,” I say, eyes still closed. “I don’t think I can stay awake much longer.”

But as I lay in bed with Pitch and try to fall asleep, I can only think how disgusting it is that even this one decision in our lives has to be managed. That woman didn’t care if Pitch married or not; she wasn’t so desperate for his attention that she wanted to keep him for herself. No, she only wanted to make him miserable and emphasize the fact that nothing he does in life can be without Capitol approval.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Been so busy I barely have time to breathe but still trying to write anyhow.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dedicate this chapter to everyone who's ever been subjected to these sorts of questions. Hopefully you haven't had to deal with the more intrusive ones.

Caligula Klora leads us over to the set, and beckons us to sit down on a loveseat while he takes an adjacent chair. I lower myself into the seat next to Pitch and keep my expression as neutral as possible. I’m wildly unprepared for this interview, yet I know that I have to pretend like I have everything under control.

“This’ll be a live interview. You know the drill,” he says. His eager eyes size us up, and after a moment, he says, “Well, get nice and comfortable with each other.”

Pitch puts his arm around me and I’m more than happy to move in closer to him, but I can’t just hide behind him and betray my fear. So I sit up straighter and lean slightly against him.

“That’s more like it,” Caligula says. The camera crews begin to move into place, and I plead with myself to get through this interview without doing anything dumb. Especially knowing that there are some pretty damned powerful people out there watching us and critiquing everything we do—and willing to kill on a whim. “Are you two comfortable?”

We both say that yes we are, and he begins to count down from five.

“Welcome, everyone! I’m so happy that you are all able to join our special interview today. I have Pitch Yassen and Juniper Sadik from District 7 with us who are going to get us up-to-speed about their very recent engagement,” Caligula says to the camera. He wears a perfect smile that doesn’t falter as he speaks. His white teeth gleam in the overhead lights that bare down upon us. “So just sit tight and we’ll have all of our questions answered!”

With that, he turns to us. The cameras shift slightly to capture all three of us easily. Somewhere behind the scenes, the editing team will be expertly crafting together a seamless program, editing out any minor flaws and choosing the camera that shows our best angles.

“You two captured our hearts last year when your romance was first shared with us,” he says. As I recall, “shared” isn’t the most appropriate phrase here. He continues, “Now we have learned that the two of you are engaged. _Engaged!_ That’s so exciting! So are these rumors true?”

“Yes they are,” Pitch answers.

“Wow, it’s so rare we get to share in something as special as the love between two victors,” he says, and I notice that he used that word “share” again like the opportunity to interview us is something we’re willingly bestowing upon him. “How long has it been?”

“Three week, give or take,” Pitch says. “We were trying to keep it quiet . . . didn’t want to interfere with everything going on here.”

“Oh, of course,” Caligula agrees. “But you know you don’t have to put your lives on hold because of us. The Hunger Games are an important event in Panem, but that doesn’t have to be the _only_ cause for celebration. Now, I’m sure people have asked you this a lot, but we still want to know: how did you propose?”

He didn’t, but of course he has to come up with something.

“I asked her while we were out on a walk,” Pitch says. Okay, that’s believable. It doesn’t require anyone else to verify that we were in a specific place at a specific time. “Nothing too elaborate.”

“Very straightforward,” Caligula agrees, and I think I can hear a tinge of disappointment in his voice like he had been hoping for some really juicy details. If that’s the case, this’ll be a very disappointing interview. He then says, “When’s the date?”

Pitch hesitates. “We haven’t set one yet,” he says. “We were planning on returning to District 7 and having a small ceremony.”

“How small of a ceremony are we talking?” Caligula asks.

“Just immediate family,” Pitch replies.

“That is _very_ small!” the interviewer comments. His eyebrows shoot up. “Certainly you know that your status provides you the resources to expand your celebration.”

“It’s not a financial matter,” Pitch replies calmly while I struggle to contain myself. Like this is a financial issue? We _know_ we have money. We just don’t care. And it’s not Caligula’s business—nor anyone else’s—to determine how big our wedding should be, or how much money we have at our disposal to use. While I silently stew, Pitch continues, “It’s a personal preference. Neither of us want a large wedding.”

“That’s fair enough. Are you thinking within the year?” he asks.

“Yes,” Pitch replies. “Actually sooner than that. . . . Probably within the next few weeks, depending on how things go.”

“A few weeks! That is a very short engagement! Not that I’m judging,” he reassures us.

“Of course,” Pitch answers. “Neither Juniper nor I care much for the traditional big party. We want it to be as simple and straightforward as possible.”

“Is that so, Juniper?” Caligula asks me, and I’m a little bummed that I even have to answer because I was hoping that he had forgotten I was here.

I nod. “Yep,” I say. “I really don’t want to bother with all the drama associated with weddings.”

Ha-ha.

I’m funny.

I smile politely at Caligula.

He nods sympathetically. “I can understand that,” he says. “When my wife and I married, whew! Drama is right! I wish we were smart and eloped like you. But really, why the secrecy? You knew we’d find out about it sooner rather than later.”

As much as I don’t like being interviewed, Caligula is not the worst person who could have the job. He tries to get along with everyone and ensure that his interviewees are all treated with respect—at least by Capitol standards. But that question—that last phrase in particular—borders on aggressive.

Pitch senses my hesitation because even though Caligula had been looking at me as he asked the question, he jumps in and says, “Well, it’s nothing personal, Caligula. It’s just that Juniper and I hadn’t quite made it public at home.”

“Made it public at home?” the interviewer asks. “By that, do you mean—”

“We hadn’t said anything to my parents yet,” I say. Which probably gets a few tsk-tsks from people watching this who think that it is wildly inappropriate for the man to not ask the woman’s parents first, but I kind of think they can shove it up their asses because they probably are not the same people who have had their entire personal lives ripped open and shoved into the public’s eye.

“Pitch, really?” Caligula says with surprise.

It takes everything in my power not to roll my eyes right now. And how damned ridiculous to put Pitch on the spot like he’s a criminal for not following traditions.

“I asked him not to,” I say before Pitch has to come up with an answer. “I wanted to be there, and I couldn’t because I was still in school for the term.” It’s a stupid excuse, but I don’t really care at this point.

“Aww, you two,” Caligula says. “Speaking of school, do you think this’ll get in the way of your studies?”

“No,” I answer.

“Are you still going to be going to the university, or do you plan on learning from distance so that you can spend your time with Pitch?” he follows up.

Honestly I hadn’t thought about this. It was way down on the list of things for me to give a shit about when there were so many other pressing concerns. Like, you know, having people out there who literally want to kill me.

“We’ll see what the options are,” Pitch says for me. “The important thing is for Juniper to continue her education.”

“Of course,” Caligula agrees. “What are you studying, Juniper?”

“Um, I’m still doing the general education courses right now,” I admit. I leave off the part that I have absolutely no idea what I want to do because going to school is so damned overwhelming most days that I’d rather find a quiet place to read than spend hours studying. As a result, my grades are mediocre, and I’m not advancing as rapidly as I should be. Nobody cares, of course; it’s not like they’ll kick a victor out of university for a B average. “I think I have another semester before I have to choose.”

“Better get working on it,” Caligula says lightly. “Once you start having children, whew—you’re not going to have any time to study.”

I freeze and stare at him. No, I don’t want children. And I don’t want to discuss why I don’t want children with this man. Fortunately Pitch says, “You’re talking long term, Caligula.”

Caligula laughs. “Of course, of course,” he says. “That’ll be for another interview, I’m sure. Now, you have only been engaged for a few weeks, you plan on getting married in another couple of weeks. . . . Have you guys even had a chance to think of where you want to go for a honeymoon?”

Well, this just goes to show that I’ve really thought absolutely _nothing_ about marriage besides the fact that we have to show up at some place and sign a document proclaiming that we are legally together. I forget that normal people go on honeymoons. Or, more likely, I forget that normal people have the ability to _think about_ a honeymoon and aren’t so overwhelmed with who needs to die for the marriage to happen.

“No plans yet,” Pitch says. “Any suggestions?”

“Well, there’s this great little place in District 4. Right on the beach—I think the both of you would love it,” Caligula says. “Really just a quaint little vacation spot.”

We can . . . go outside of District 7? Would we need passes for that? And wait, did Caligula imply that he has been there? Capitol citizens can go to other parts of Panem besides past arenas? Now even more confused than before, I have nothing to add to the conversation that won’t make me seem like a complete idiot.

“Thank you, we’ll have to look into that,” Pitch says.

“Oh you’re quite welcome. I think what something people are very curious about—I know that I sure am—is what really drew you two together,” Caligula says. “Pitch, you were Juniper’s mentor. Do you think having that sort of relationship with her set up the relationship you have now?”

“I don’t think so,” Pitch answers. A strange question. I don’t even know how he could answer that. It doesn’t sound like Pitch does, either.

“So you weren’t interested in her at that time?”

“Oh. No, no definitely not,” Pitch answers quickly. “Our relationship is much more recent.”

Ugh. I stare at the coffee table with an ugly potted plant and think about how much I’d like to smash it against Caligula’s face. How dare he even imply that Pitch was interested in one of his tributes! And yet I can do nothing but sit here and pretend like I’m totally okay with this line of questioning.

“At what point did you guys realize how much you loved each other?” Caligula asks.

“Last summer,” Pitch says.

“Oh, yes, that was so much fun following along with you two during interviews,” Caligula says. “Even when I wasn’t the one doing the interviewing.” He chuckles that that. I don’t know why. “It’s just really so great to see your love blossom and grow into what it is now.”

He sighs, and he doesn’t give us a question to answer. I suppose he probably wants us to offer our own insight into this, but I’m not going to give it to him. After a long second in which it’s clear that neither Pitch nor I plan on sharing anything else, he continues.

“Is that when you realized that she was the one, Pitch?” he asks.

“I don’t think there was an exact point, Caligula,” he answers. “But a few weeks ago, we realized that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. And neither of us wanted to wait six months or a year for a big wedding ceremony—we just wanted to keep things quiet and simple and begin that part of our lives together as soon as we could without it interfering with our work.”

“Very simple . . . I see that Juniper doesn’t have a ring,” Caligula comments.

“She didn’t want one,” Pitch says easily. “Which we figured was fine because she’d have a wedding ring soon enough.”

“Of course. A very short engagement, so no need for that,” the interviewer says. “Now, I’m sure that you get comments on this and I hate to harp on something that you’ve had to explain a million times, but Pitch, you’re, what, thirty-four? And Juniper, you’re nineteen. Does this difference in age bother you?”

Literally no one cares at this point except for my parents.

“No, it does not bother us,” Pitch answers.

“Right, right. Age is just a number,” Caligula agrees.

“Er, well, we recognize that there’s a fifteen year difference,” Pitch says. “But this is just the way it worked out.”

“So you don’t feel like the fact that you’re so much older than her—and I don’t mean that in a bad way, might I clarify—is problematic?” Caligula prods.

(I’d punch Caligula in the face if I thought I could get away with it.)

I wonder if it’s really that weird in the Capitol to have people marry who are so many years apart. Certainly the age-minimizing technology has led to people being attracted to folks outside of their age bracket because they didn’t know the difference. So why is he harping on it here with us? Or is it just the fact that we’re victors so everything must be split open and gutted for the world to see? I lean into Pitch—just ever so slightly so that I don’t look desperate—and try to keep myself composed.

“No,” Pitch answers.

“There are some people who are of the thought that you might be taking advantage of Juniper,” says the interviewer casually like he didn’t just accuse Pitch _yet again_ of something completely inappropriate. But the most absurd part of what he said is not even the fact that he brought it up but that the Capitol doesn’t care about the wellbeing of their victors and who are taking advantage of them. In fact, they actively promote it.

Anger crackles within me, and I struggle to maintain my composure. How the hell is Pitch supposed to answer that? If he says no, then he’ll be doing what somebody who would be taking advantage of me would say. _I_ don’t even know what to say. At least nothing that will not get us in trouble.

“I think they might be misunderstanding the situation,” Pitch answers after the briefest of hesitations. “Juniper is an intelligent and capable woman, and she’s able to make decisions for herself. I’m sure that people don’t mean to imply otherwise, of course. I know that I’m older than she is, but it has never presented an issue in our relationship; I view her as a peer, not as a dependent.”

“That’s so good. You two are wonderful together. It really is just amazing what love can do,” Caligula sighs as he looks at us. “You two both overcame the odds to be victors, and then you found each other. It’s so perfect.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” I say, which gets a snort from Pitch.

Caligula is still mystified that people can fall in love (I think?) and almost doesn’t hear me. But then he continues talking, “I really wish the two of you the best for your future together, and I look forward to more interviews. It’s so wonderful that we have a couple who have been united both in their roles as victors and in love.”

Is that the end of the interview? I take a deep breath.

“That is all the time we have today. Thank you, Pitch and Juniper, for joining us, and I wish you the best in your very short engagement and your wedding planning,” Caligula says.

“Thank you, Caligula,” Pitch replies. I mutter my own “thank you” and smile politely at the interviewer.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving. Here are some more chapters of murder and stuff.

“You two are just phenomenal,” Caligula says to us as we stand up from our places on the couch. I don’t think I’d describe either of us as “phenomenal” in any regard. The interviewer shakes Pitch’s hand and thanks him once again for coming. He releases his grip and says, “You guys really know how to make people’s day. Two victors in love—not something we have very often. A huge inspiration.”

Why does this not sound like a good thing?

“An inspiration?” Pitch probes casually. He puts an arm loosely around me. “For getting married?”

“Why of course,” Caligula answers. “You two are the embodiment of victory! Two people who have been united by their success in the arena! Certainly, you must realize how important this is.”

Nope, I definitely don’t like this. For the first time, I wonder if we’re making a mistake by getting married.

 _No,_ I tell myself sternly. _I won’t let them ruin this. This is our decision, and I will not allow them to take this away from us._

“I suppose it is,” Pitch agrees. But he doesn’t sound any more certain of it than I feel. Neither of us considered that we might be made into some political stance on the thrill of victory. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. These people will do whatever they can to make sure that we’re miserable, especially if it can be tied into our time in the arena.

Caligula claps his shoulder, and at first I think it’s a genuinely friendly gesture, but then he guides Pitch and me away from the camera crews and over towards a relatively empty area of the room. The interviewer persona drops away, and Caligula looks between us intently.

“You will do well to remember that your lives have far more meaning now than they did before you set foot in the arena,” the man says to us. “When your names were announced at the end of your trials, you transformed into victors—and with that, you stepped into a role far more important than you understood. People look up to you. You have eyes watching you. Don’t forget that your preferences and desires come second to your duty to your country.”

Wait, what?

Pitch’s grip on my shoulder tightens ever so slightly.

“What does that mean?” I ask Caligula.

“Your responsibility is to do as you are instructed,” he says to me. “You are setting a precedent for those who come after you.” Without further explanation, he nods to us both and heads over towards the crews, leaving us stunned in his wake.

I glance at Pitch. He looks at me briefly, and then leads me out into the hallway.

“Was that a warning or a threat?” I ask him under my breath as we walk down the corridor.

Pitch swallows hard and doesn’t answer right away. We leave the building through the closest door and find ourselves on the street. Here people walk about, some at a brisk trot and others more leisurely, but none of them have great concern for the two of us strolling at our own pace. Perhaps if they took the time to look about them, they’d notice who we are. They don’t care. They’re too absorbed in their own things.

“There have been very few marriages between victors,” Pitch tells me. “I guess most victors decide that they need someone who doesn’t remind them of the Hunger Games whenever they look at them.”

“So? What does that have to do with us? Why the weirdness?” I ask.

“I can’t say for certain because I am just as confused as you,” he answers. “Whether he meant it as a warning or threat, I suppose it doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that he is correct that we are in uncharted territory and people will be watching us—and judging us.”

“And getting ready to kill us off if we do anything wrong,” I mumble.

“That, I don’t know,” Pitch says. “Martha is powerful, but I don’t know if she’s powerful enough to kill you off based on a whim. . . . Regardless I’m not going to chance it. I think the take-away message here is that we need to go along with whatever they tell us.”

I’m quiet for a moment as I ponder our predicament. I can’t help but think how unfair it is that we’re subjected to these things, which I know is a completely pointless thing to think. It doesn’t matter if it’s unfair or not—what matters is that we’re getting screwed over no matter what we do, and now we have to tread incredibly carefully.

“The more they do this sort of crap, the more I’m happy that we’re getting married,” I say.

“How so?” Pitch asks.

“Well . . . they frustrate me, all the little games they play with us,” I try to explain. “You’re the only thing here that’s _normal_ and stable.”

“That’s sad,” he comments. I frown at him, and he grins. “I mean, I wouldn’t describe myself as either of those things.”

I roll my eyes. “But I’m serious,” I tell him.

He drops his arm from around me and takes my hand. “As victors, we get neither normality nor stability,” he says more seriously. “Caligula was right in that regard, at least in some respects: our role is much different from that of anyone else in the country. And with that difference comes a complete absence of sanity.”

“I know,” I say. “I guess this is our chance at something like normalcy.”

“I’m a little concerned that you think me so normal,” he comments.

“Why’s that?” I ask. “Because you’re not normal, or because it indicates that I’m so messed up that I think you are normal?”

“Eh, a little of both,” he answers. But the thing he doesn’t seem to understand is that he _is_ normal. Maybe not by the standards of your average district resident, but to me he is completely normal. When you’ve been through all the shit we have, the definition shifts a bit. Nightmares, disappearing to take care of “clients” you hate, being torn apart by the constant onslaught of death—these things are all normal now. I glance around at the Capitol streets around us, at the glitter and splendor of this damned city, and I’m thankful that despite everything that goes on here, he is not messed up more than he is.

Pitch pulls me out of my thoughts and says, “But that aside, what _do_ you want for the wedding?”

“I was kind of hoping just to go to the Justice Building and sign a paper and call it good,” I tell him, despite knowing that it won’t play out like that since the Capitol has gotten wind of our engagement.

“Hmm,” he replies, and he doesn’t say more for a few seconds. I wonder if somehow that doesn’t sit right with him, like he was expecting more. But then he says, “No cake or anything?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Really?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I figured we might get hungry,” he answers.

“Then we can eat whatever’s in the cupboard at home,” I tell him. But then I wonder, what would I consider to be “home” once I’m married? Whose house will we live at: mine or his? If we’re in mine, we’d have to deal with my parents. But if we’re in his, then it’s weird to think about my parents all by themselves in that great big mansion. Another stupid thing to think about.

“What do you think about a honeymoon?” he asks me as we side-step a woman with a tiny dog wearing a miniature version of her outfit. “I admit that I hadn’t really thought it was necessary until Caligula asked about it, and now I’m sure we can’t avoid it.”

“Do we have to leave District 7?” I ask. The only other place besides the brief stops on the Victory Tour was when I visited Esther in District 8 earlier this year. The idea of going to another district when we’re already being watched by everyone makes me uncomfortable.

Pitch thinks for a second. “I guess it doesn’t matter. . . . I have a feeling that if Caligula mentioned that place in District 4, that’s where we’re going to end up,” he says.

“Do Capitol citizens go to the districts?” I ask. “He made it sound like that he’s been there.”

“There are some resorts set up around the country, like what they do with previous arenas,” Pitch says. “They’re pretty isolated, so whoever goes to them can’t just walk through the district itself. Just use the resources.”

Right. So now the people who go to visit these places would end up with a very idealistic view of the districts. Then they go back to the Capitol and brag about the places they’ve been, like all we are in the districts are tourist destinations to support their desire to visit “exotic” locations.

“All districts or just some?” I ask.

“Probably just the more desirable districts,” he says. “I can’t imagine anybody going to District 8.”

“It’s . . . not a bad place,” I say.

“You have the perspective of somebody who is actually willing to accept reality,” he answers. “Most people from the Capitol don’t care about that. They just want the superficial aspects of each district.”

I let out a breath. “So nice beaches and plenty of alcohol?”

“Something of that sort,” he says.

“Sounds boring,” I answer. But that, I suppose, is why District 4 was chosen for a resort. I admit that seeing the wide expanse of ocean intrigues me—as well as terrifies me—but I don’t want to visit the beach because I’m at a Capitol resort.

“You know, it’s actually real nature,” he tells me. “So you should be happy that they are experiencing something real and not manufactured.”

“That’s little consolation when everything else is being manipulated to cater to them,” I say. “Have you ever been to one of these places?”

“Maybe once or twice,” he answers. “It’s been awhile, and it wasn’t the beaches of District 4 . . . I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“Where did you go?” I ask. The idea that he might have seen more of the country that most of us are allowed intrigues me. Did he get to choose the places he went, or were they all pre-determined for him like he suspects it will be for us?

Pitch doesn’t say anything for several seconds. “It was awhile ago,” he says.

“And you forgot where you went?” I ask skeptically.

He shrugs.

 _He doesn’t want to tell you,_ I realize. For whatever reason, he’s keeping it to himself. Well, fine. It’s not like I _need_ to know where he went . . . but it’s also not like going to a resort in District 1 or wherever is that big of a deal that he needs to keep it secret. But despite this, I can’t help but be irritated that he’s not telling me more. I glance at him and realize that he has once again disappeared into himself, and that I won’t be getting more information out of him without seriously prying.

The city around us never ends, but in the distance a large building looms over its surrounding neighbors. We’ve managed to walk closer to City Center, but at least I know where I am now.

“I need to run to the Training Center,” I say. “I think I forgot a book there.”

Pitch doesn’t catch on that I’m talking to him for another second or two, and then he mutters, “Got it. Want me to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” I say to him. Though the question is whether _he_ will be fine. When I ask, he assures me that he can take care of himself and not to worry about him.


	35. Chapter 35

I don’t know where Elm is, but I know he’s been here recently. The avoxes have taken away the glasses, but they didn’t wipe down the table where a thin ring of water gleams in the overhead lights. Maybe he’s sleeping, I don’t know. I just hope he’s not hiding in his room drinking.

Pitch’s room has been cleaned out, but I still search through it for my missing book. To my irritation, I can’t find it anywhere at all, which leaves me wondering if it really is back in my apartment and I just happened to overlook it. I turn over pillows and check under the wardrobe and open every drawer and cupboard I can find. I even lift the mattress, but it’s pretty heavy and I can’t get a corner raised more than a couple inches off the box springs. Finally I’m forced to give up, and I return to the common area where I drift back towards the table and see that the water ring has been wiped away. I wonder if Elm heard me coming and whisked his alcohol off to his bedroom so that I wouldn’t bother him about it, and I happened to stroll it before the avoxes could clean it up.

I meander into the sitting room because I did do plenty of reading here. But I find nothing as I shuffle through magazines and toss pillows from one piece of furniture to another. When I reach the end table on the far side of the room, however, I notice a manila folder with unfamiliar handwriting scrawled on it. I can’t read what it says, but I flip the folder open.

At first I don’t understand the words, like I’m reading a different language. But then I realize that it’s some sort of title: _The Evolution of Quercus grisea and the Impact on Soil Development_. Frowning, I continue reading, but none of it makes a whole lot of sense. “Quercus” refers to an oak tree, but I can’t make too much more out of it than that.

“I wrote it three years ago,” comes the voice behind me. I turn around and find Daphne, arms crossed, standing between the dining room and sitting room watching me carefully. “It’s a paper on a local tree species. . . .”

“You’re . . . a biologist?” I ask skeptically. It’s hard to believe the woman in the blue and pink ruffled suit in front of me might actually be capable of scientific research.

“I would have liked to believe so,” she replies.

“But you’re an escort?”

A rueful smile spreads on her lips, but it slips away as she continues, “Yes, I am. And so my duties have changed.”

I close the folder and hand it back to Daphne. She reaches out and takes it. I’d feel bad about reading it except for the fact that she left it out here for everyone to see, so clearly it wasn’t a secret.

“That’s a pretty big job change,” I comment for lack of better things. Annoyance flickers across her face for the briefest of moments, and I realize that she might not have meant for anyone to read this, at least not anyone who wasn’t an avox. Elm would probably be too drunk to bother trying to read, and I doubt that anyone else comes through here who might chance upon it. She wasn’t expecting me to randomly appear, so she thought she was safe.

“I needed to reevaluate my priorities,” she comments casually as she opens up the folder and fingers through the pages. Her eyes dart back and forth as she scans through the sheets. Her cryptic answer gives me little to go on. . . . And yet I know beyond a doubt that the truth is much deeper than what she has given me. Nobody “reevaluates priorities” to go from a scientist to an escort.

Her eyes flick back to me and she says, “I’ll see you around, Juniper. Have escort things to take care of.”

“Bye,” I say as she turns around and heads to the elevators.

Her “escort things” . . . I don’t know what escorts do, but I bet they usually don’t spend their time reading about oak trees. I wait for her to disappear before I resume my search of the sitting room for my book, but it’s a half-hearted attempt. My mind keeps drifting back to the escort, and I have to manually redirect it to the couch cushions I’ve been staring at for thirty seconds. Daphne spent a considerable amount of time reading on her tablet while hanging out in the District 7 apartment. . . . I wonder how much of that involved her research. Finally after a few minutes, I find the book wedged between the armrest and a cushion of a chair that I didn’t think I had even sat in. I yank it out, tuck it in my pocket, and head to the elevator.

But something keeps me from leaving once I get down to the ground floor. Not a physical barrier but a mental one. I stand awkwardly in the middle of the lobby and stare out into the gleaming light of day beyond the glass doors.

I don’t know what’s going on with Daphne, but I do know that something’s screwed up with her story. Things are not what they seem—they’re never what they seem in the Capitol, though. And now I find myself drawn away from the door and back into the depths of the building. Because I realize that I have left things open that should be closed, and I gave up on an issue that I wrote off because I didn’t understand it and had so many other things on my mind. In doing so, I have cut myself off from one of the few people in this damned city I actually like. Without thinking about it, I head to the hallway and up the side elevator to the corridor that leads to the mentoring room.

At first nobody takes notice that I am here; all of the remaining mentors stare intently at their screens or mutter things in hushed voices to each other. Cronus and Isolde of District 1, Freya of District 2, Tethys and Hero of District 4, Elijah of District 5, Savera of District 6, Lady of District 10. I don’t see Elm, but I’m pretty certain he’s in the District 7 apartment. It’s Day 8, and a whopping nine tributes remain. I can’t remember the last time there were so many still alive this late into the Hunger Games. Still, despite having nearly half of the tributes within the arena, the mentoring room is pretty damned quiet. I linger long enough to make sure that nothing serious is going on, and then I clear my throat.

Everybody turns and looks at me at once, except for Elijah who is listening to a play-by-play on his headphones and either can’t hear me or doesn’t care enough to turn away from his workstation.

“Isolde? Can I borrow you?” I ask.

Isolde looks up at me blankly for a second before she smiles and pats Cronus on the shoulder. “See you later, buddy,” she says to him, and then she bounds across the room to the door.

We step into the hallway and I close the door behind us.

“I want to hear it from you, and I’m actually going to listen,” I say. “Why did you report me?”

Isolde hesitates and throws a glance back towards the mentoring room. When she looks at me again, she says, “Can we go see your garden?”

It’s not “my” garden, but I don’t say anything as we head to the garden and step inside. Once more, I’m immersed in this surreal world, and I find myself falling a few paces behind Isolde. She leads me through the garden on a path that must be very familiar to her judging by how swiftly she navigates the winding walkways. When she comes to a stop at a bench, she sits down and pats the wooden slats next to her. I lower myself onto the bench next to her.

“Things get a little . . . cutthroat in the District 1 apartment, as I’m sure you can imagine,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s the same way in District 7—I imagine that it’s not, but who knows?—but conversations get very heated. You and Pitch, well, everybody likes you guys, so I don’t want you to think otherwise, but there’s a lot of pressure to make sure that our tribute isn’t getting screwed over. So in order to make sure that Europa, my tribute, gets the best chance she can have, I had to report you.”

“You couldn’t have told the other people in the apartment to mind their own business?” I ask. “And why did _you_ end up reporting me, and not Cronus?”

She shrugs. “Politics,” she says. “I wish I had a better answer, or even maybe that I was a better friend. But I couldn’t have let it slide by because if maybe—and I really mean this as a far and distant ‘maybe’—you had been helping Pitch, I could never forgive myself if it screwed over my tribute.”

“But you could have just _talked_ to me,” I say.

“I know,” she says as she looks down at her hands and picks at the black polish on her nails. “I’m probably a coward, I don’t know. But sometimes it’s really easy to get swept up in all the Career-talk in the apartment. I guess that’s probably why I volunteered to go to the Hunger Games to begin with: I was just too dumb to figure out that everything they were selling me wasn’t as good as it seemed.”

“I thought you weren’t a Career. That’s what you said the other day,” I point out. I study her carefully. She doesn’t want to meet my eyes and her blond hair falls in her face as she flecks off polish from her nails.

“Yeah, yeah. But we both know that was garbage,” she answers. “I don’t want to be a Career anymore, but if you come from District 1, you have no choice. That’s what you are now and forever—and my stupid decision is proof that I can’t really get out of the Career mindset, so I’d be willing to stab my friend in the back.”

I don’t try to reassure her that she didn’t stab me in the back because she did. But I guess her explanation makes sense, if you get over the fact that it was still a lousy thing to do. I know that I won’t hold it against her because this is just another way that the Capitol tries to manipulate our lives and our relationships, and I’m not letting them get the best of me. I won’t let them take Isolde from me, just like I won’t let them take Pitch from me.

“Thank you. I guess I should let you get back to mentoring,” I say to her.

She shrugs again. “I needed a break anyhow,” she says as she looks at me. “Sitting next to Cronus all day isn’t _the worst_ but it could be better. And anyway, I want to hear more about this upcoming wedding.”

I roll my eyes. “You’ll get to hear about it on television tonight, since you missed the live interview,” I say to her.

“Interview about your wedding?” she asks. “In the middle of the Hunger Games.”

“I guess things in the arena are pretty boring right now,” I tell her. “So Pitch and I are filling in to make things more exciting. I don’t know. . . . But they did manage to get some pretty low questions in there, so I guess that’s entertainment.”

Isolde frowns. “I’m sorry, Juniper,” she says. She bounces her leg up and down. “I mean, I’m so happy for you and Pitch, but I can’t picture either of you being thrilled about a personal interview.”

“Yeah, it was a little rough,” I say. “Especially when they accused Pitch of taking advantage of me.”

She chokes. “What?” she asks. “They _what_?”

“Apparently because he’s older than me, that has to be the reason we’re getting married,” I say bitterly. Just thinking about Caligula’s questions send a surge of anger through me that I struggle to control before it washes me away.

“Ugh, they’re so stupid,” Isolde replies. “You and Pitch aren’t people I’d label as head-over-heels-in-love or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t still love each other.”

I want to tell her that I don’t love him, but now is not the time. It feels quite hypocritical to accuse Isolde of being a shit friend when I turn around and lie to her face, even though I know that the situations are quite different. I pluck a leaf from a nearby shrub and turn it over in my fingers to try to distract myself.

“Are there more interviews?” she asks.

“They didn’t tell me,” I say. “Honestly, it was probably a pretty boring interview, so I don’t know what else they would expect to get out of us.”

“I guess it’s exciting for them to have victors marrying,” Isolde comments. “I don’t know if it’s ever happened.”

“There have been nearly a hundred and fifty years of Hunger Games. . . . Surely it’s happened before,” I say. “It can’t be _that_ novel.”

Isolde thinks for a moment. “I don’t believe it’s happened in District 1, at least, and we have had a great many victors,” she says. “Maybe in District 2 or 4? Anyway, I’m surprised they don’t make a bigger deal about it than they already have.”

 _Or maybe they haven’t gotten started yet,_ I think with a hint of nausea. I can’t stomach the thought of the wedding being hyped up more than it already is.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take attention away from the Hunger Games,” I say flatly. “How is your tribute doing anyhow?”

“Are you really asking or are you just being polite?” Isolde clarifies.

That requires me to think for a moment, but finally I say, “I’m really asking.” I don’t like Careers, but that doesn’t mean that I think they should all die. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have Isolde.

She smiles. “She’s doing really well,” she answers. “I am trying not to get my hopes up after Joy last year. But Europa is definitely a bigger contender for victory.”

And if she is, then that means that Wisteria doesn’t have a chance.

 _There is no good solution to this,_ I think. _Either Wisteria wins at the expense of another tribute, or another tribute wins at her expense. I can’t focus on more than one person because I’ll just be miserable regardless._ And yet here I am, almost hoping that Isolde’s tribute has a chance to make it, and then kicking myself for even letting the thought play in my mind.

“It sucks, you know? Here I am telling you about how great my tribute is, and yours—or, well, Pitch’s—got his head loped off in a Gamemaker event,” Isolde mutters. If only she knew. But I can’t tell her, and I likely will never be able to tell her, even if we went into the farthest reaches of the world where nobody can hear us. How do you even begin to tell somebody that your tribute was decapitated because you wanted to get married and your friend—er, fiancé—refused to break up with you when ordered by a third party? On what planet do these words even belong in the same sentence?

“It’s okay,” I tell her.

At last Isolde stands up. “Thanks for stopping by,” she says. “I should probably meander back before Cronus thinks that I’ve gotten lost. Once this . . . ends, we should hang out.”

“Okay.” Another totally normal snippet of conversation between victors. “Call me whenever.”

The two of us head out of the garden and into the hallway where Isolde says goodbye and heads back to the mentor room.


	36. Chapter 36

In the evening, I call Esther to check in on her.

“Hello, Juniper,” she says when I tell her who is calling. I can’t read her based on voice alone, so it’s hard to tell if she is excited to hear from me or still reeling from her tribute’s death. It’s been several days which might be a long time to the Capitol citizens, but it takes far longer than a few hours to cope with the loss of your tribute.

“I was just checking in,” I tell her.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” she answers. She probably means it. I think I can hear a smile in her voice. But then I hear noises in the background on her end. 

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Oh? Yeah,” she responds. “I’m at Maximus’ right now. He’s fixing me dinner.”

Right, Maximus the twenty-three-year-old college professor. “So you’re . . . okay?” I ask.

“Don’t worry about me, Juniper,” she says. “Maximus is alright. You’ll have to meet him at some point. But I haven’t talked to you in quite some time, and I wanted to say congratulations on your engagement. I really hope you don’t think me selfish for talking so much about mine that you couldn’t talk about yours.”

“What? Oh, no, don’t worry, Esther,” I tell her. “Pitch and I were trying to keep it quiet, but of course that didn’t work. We probably should have told you earlier, but. . . .” My voice trails off. I hate this. I hate the lies and the hypocrisy. _But if this is what keeps Pitch and me together. . . ._

“It’s okay, I understand,” she replies. “I’ll have to catch up with you later. Maybe we could meet up?”

“That’s fine,” I answer.

“I have to go,” she says. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

We say goodbye, and when the call disconnects, I stand in the middle of my bedroom with the phone still pressed to my ear as I digest this conversation. Yet none of it really sits right with me. I toss the phone on the bed and head out of the room where I flop down on the couch next to Pitch who is engrossed in a book. The muted television displays what’s going on in the arena which, at this point, isn’t very much.

“You’re watching TV?” I ask.

Pitch lowers the book. “I’m waiting for the replay of our interview,” he answers over the top of the pages.

I furrow my brow. “Why do you want to watch that?” I ask.

He studies me and sets the book down on the coffee table. “I do that sometimes—watch my own interviews so I can see what to improve,” he answers. “It’s um, how I manage to handle them. There’s always something to learn so that you can get through the next interview more smoothly.”

That’s weird, but not illogical. The thing about being a victor is that some of us, like me, have no desire or interest to be interviewed, nor do we have natural charisma. We are in the spotlight because we won the Hunger Games—we were the best killers of the year—not because we have any great aptitude for handling fame. I never would have pegged Pitch as somebody who struggled with the cameras, not after all the times I’ve seen him interviewed and he handled things very well, but I guess that’s only a testament to how well he’s adapted to life as a victor. Especially a victor who had seven interviews immediately after victory.

After a few minutes, they pause the recaps to replay the interview from earlier today. I brace myself for whatever terrible performance I’m about to see, and I’m not disappointed. It’s bad. Not absolutely hopeless, but it’s very clear that neither Pitch nor myself are comfortable being there.

“What a shitty set of questions,” I mumble when it’s over. Although it seemed like we were on that couch for an hour, the entire interview was only a few minutes. But those few minutes were a struggle to get through.

“Which we clearly weren’t prepared for,” Pitch adds. He rubs his chin and stares at the television even though he muted it the moment the interview ended. But before he has a chance to get too far into his assessment, the television starts showing something that’s clearly in District 7, judging by the thick forests and hearty dress of the citizens. He flicks the volume back on.

They’re interviewing people in District 7. About us. What the hell?

“Oh, I see them all the time,” says one man whose name I don’t catch before the words at the bottom of the screen disappear. I’ve never seen this guy in my life, but apparently he sees us a lot which is pretty damned creepy. “They completely belong together.”

“They’re just so cute,” says a woman in a separate clip. “I had no doubt in my mind that they would get married.”

“I think it’s a little weird, but I can see it happening,” says another man.

I don’t know where they’re digging up these people from, but before I know it, they transition to a group of girls. And I do know this little clique. They were in my class, though of course they’ve graduated by now. I didn’t get along with any of them; we mostly just avoided each other. But here they are all smiles and happy.

“Juniper is such a great person! I’m so happy for her!” says Hazel. We used to sit next to each other in math class, but she stopped talking to me after I turned her in for cheating off my exam. We both failed it anyhow, so I don’t know why I bothered.

“When we heard the news, we were so ecstatic,” adds Lorena. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to that girl in my life, but I have seen her from a distance. The other girls nod vigorously to agree. They keep giggling and looking towards the camera.

An off-screen voice asks them a couple of basic questions, which they give stupid answers to, like how long they’ve known me, what their opinions are on this or that, etc. Then the camera moves on, and they interview a couple more people before wrapping up the segment. Once it’s clear that they’re done with that, Pitch turns off the television.

We sit in silence.

Finally he says, “I did not expect that, either.”

“I can’t wait until this is over,” I mutter. “That was extremely awkward.”

“So at least there is some reinforcement from the district saying that we are in love, since our interview was so miserable,” he says to me. “Not that I think you did a bad job, by the way. Aside from looking like you wanted to punch something every time Caligula asked a question.”

“If by ‘something’ you mean ‘someone,’ then yes,” I say dryly.

“I need to work on answering questions better,” he says more to himself than to me. He taps his finger against his leg as he drifts off into thought.

“Does it matter, though?” I ask. “I mean, really? If they want to interview us before we get married, then they’re going to get whatever we give them.”

Pitch frowns. “I’ve been thinking about what Caligula told us after the interview,” he says. “And I’m afraid that they don’t want to see what we just gave them. We are . . . very unusual in our marriage, and they want to see that we’re happy and appreciative of their attention.”

I roll my eyes and slump down in the couch. “Screw them,” I say.

“Juniper, why do you think I rewatch my own interviews?” he asks. When I don’t answer, he continues, “I don’t care about the interviews themselves or how I’m portrayed. I care that I’m doing what I’m supposed to and keeping negative attention off of me. So I need to review what I’ve said and make sure that it, well, pleases them.”

Pitch thinks too much about what the Capitol cares about. I don’t. If they want me to go to an interview, fine; I’ll do my best in order to respond to them as they wish. But I’m not going to bend over backwards to cater to their every whim, and let words come out of my mouth that I detest but they adore.

“I don’t like it, either,” he adds. “I hate interviews. But I know that it’s what I have to do in order to survive here, so I do it.”

I shift my eyes towards him and watch him for a second. “How the hell are we supposed to prepare for an interview like that?” I ask. “I couldn’t believe some of the crap they asked us.”

“We can predict questions to a certain degree,” he answers. “I really should have thought more about what sort of invasive things they’d want to know. But it’s also body language. You are in no way comfortable at interviews, and I can’t blame you. . . . But you need to at least look comfortable when you’re with me, or people really will start questioning our relationship.”

“But I _am_ comfortable when I’m with you,” I protest. “It’s just that as soon as they turn on the cameras, it doesn’t look that way because I hate all their damned questions.”

“Which is a problem,” he says. “I know that you’re comfortable with me, or I wouldn’t have wanted to marry you. But that needs to be portrayed to the people watching the interview.”

Right. I have no idea how the hell that would happen. I’m sorry if I suck at hiding how miserable I am when people point cameras in my face and ask me personal questions; I think most people would be in the same boat. But I’m a victor, and I’m marrying another victor. And people want to see their victors be happy while doing the things they hate the most.

“What’s your suggestion?” I ask carefully. “I don’t know how to look more comfortable when I don’t want to be there.”

Pitch runs a hand through his hair as he thinks. I doubt there is a magical solution for this, and I fear that I’m going to have to start consciously watching my body language so closely that I’ll end up botching up the interviews because I can’t focus on the questions. However, Pitch finally turns his attention to me and says, “Let’s go outside where they can see us.”

“What will that do?” I ask. I gesture towards the television. “They just saw us.”

“No, I mean that we should be more comfortable with each other out of doors where people can see us but aren’t directly paying attention to us,” he tells me.

“You want me to . . . practice PDA?” I raise an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs. “I guess,” he says. “Is that weird?”

Yes, completely. But all I say is, “I guess not coming from the guy who rewatches his own interviews.”

“See, I don’t think that part is weird,” Pitch replies. “If you get a test back, you want to look it over and see what you missed so that you don’t do the same thing in the future, right?”

I stare at him. It does make some sense, but this is an entirely different scenario. “What you’re talking about is some sort of messed up acting,” I say.

“Is that not what all of this is?” he says. “We have to play our parts to keep people entertained, whether we like it or not.”

“Or else people die,” I add. This is all so much work. No wonder victors don’t tend to marry each other. I never would have imagined that it would generate this complicated interplay of cause and effect that we have to tread so carefully. But at last I nod. “Okay. But I think I’ve had enough public attention today, so can we hold off on the PDA until tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he says, and then he gestures for me to move in closer. I bury myself into his chest and he holds me against him as we slump together on the couch. I am comfortable here. I don’t want to move, nor do I want to face reality. I just want to exist right here and now with Pitch and never think about anything ever again. Pitch’s chest moves up and down as he breathes, and his breaths slow as he begins to relax. I close my eyes and try to match my breathing with his. His fingers run through my hair absently as we lay here together. I don’t want cameras to see this. I don’t want the audience at home to have this moment of peace displayed to them. This is mine and Pitch’s alone.

But I know it won’t remain that way for long.


	37. Chapter 37

Day Nine. Nothing has happened since Sage died on Day Six, and since we haven’t been called for any more interviews, I know that something is bound to happen today. Pitch tries to get me to go with him for a walk, but I can’t seem to leave the television longer than it takes to get a glass of water from the kitchen or to use the toilet. When he realizes that trying to get me to budge won’t work, he comes and joins me on the couch.

The television shows the various tributes wandering around. The District 5 boy looks to be on his last legs. Fever shines in his eyes, and sweat beads on his forehead. His uniform hangs on his frame, and the announcer points out that the kid hasn’t had anything to eat in several days, and very little before that. She shakes her head and clucks at the situation before the camera turns to the District 10 boy who mumbles things to himself and works on some sort of fence he’s building with spiked tree branches he carved roughly with a large machete. Neither Janice nor Caligula can quite figure out what he’s doing, but their excitement increases when they realize that the Careers are heading in his general direction. The five remaining Careers look more eager than ever to get things going. For as sick and disheveled as the District 5 and 10 males are, they are vibrant and healthy. They have had full access to the Cornucopia for the past nine days and have not been wanting for food. The only thing they desire now is to fulfill their dreams to murder other teenagers.

The District 6 girl has been on her own since she and Sage went their separate ways, but she ran into the District 10 boy at one point. Perhaps there would have been a confrontation if the guy wasn’t so out of it, swearing and muttering to himself. Meanwhile, Wisteria has been holding her own. She managed to climb into the tops of trees to pluck down coconuts and pineapples, the former of which she also uses for water since she doesn’t have any means to purify any water from the stream.

The camera turns back to the Careers. I know the gamemakers will never let the District 10 boy win, or even have a chance of winning, since it’s clear that being in the arena has driven him mad, but I still brace myself for his inevitable death. Five verse one isn’t fair, but neither the Careers nor the Gamemakers care about that. Within moments, the Careers burst through the foliage into the little clearing that the District 10 boy has made. The boy sees them, and panic flashes across his features.

Pitch leans over and takes my hand.

The District 2 girl moves closer to the boy, but suddenly the ground gives way underneath her, and she falls into a pit. I jerk at the sudden turn of events and peer intently at the screen. We don’t see what happens right away, but no cannon sounds. The District 1 male inches closer to the pit, and only then does the camera pan around to show us the District 2 girl lying impaled on spikes in the bottom of the hole. She chokes on her own blood, and it’s clear she won’t make it. It’s just not clear how long it’ll take for her to die.

For several moments, none of the Careers say anything. Then the District 1 girl, Isolde’s tribute, motions for the District 4 male to give her his spear. He does, and she thrusts it down into the hole. A cannon fires.

The Careers turn back to the District 10 male. I don’t know if he made that hole himself or found it, but the spikes within it have the same roughly-carved tips as the ones in his wall. Before the Careers can come to him, the District 10 male charges them with his machete. The District 4 male pulls out a knife and stabs it into the kid’s chest. He staggers and falls to the ground. Moments later, the cannon booms. The Careers get to business searching the area for any more surprises—good or bad—and retrieving their weapons. It takes a couple minutes for the District 4 male to climb down into the pit ever so carefully and unstick his spear from his former ally’s chest.

All-in-all, they don’t gain much out of this interaction except that they are two more cannons closer to home. And now the remaining tributes are in the top eight—technically the top seven since the last two tributes died back-to-back.

“How will Elm handle an interview if he’s drunk?” I ask Pitch as the television turns to commercials.

“I don’t know,” he says, eyes still glued to the screen. “I wish I could help him, but. . . . Hard to help somebody who doesn’t want it.”

How do they handle the interviews with drunk mentors? If the interview had happened earlier in the Hunger Games, I would suspect that Elm would be able to handle it well enough, but it seems that he has deteriorated over time; how could he manage to be coherent enough to answer questions in an interview?

A few minutes later, the District 5 boy dies from his injuries.

“Well, I guess Elijah gets out of an interview,” I say.

“Fortunately for him. I can’t imagine he would have been able to pull off a decent interview about a mostly-dead tribute, even if he tried,” Pitch answers.

Pitch has never been subtle about his dislike for Elijah’s interview tactics. Though I have to admit that I admire the District 5 victor’s style, I know that Pitch isn’t wrong about it being an incredibly dangerous line to tread. Even if I thought I could pull off something similar, it would be foolish and possibly get more people killed.

Before I can contemplate it any longer, the television now shows us the District 6 girl, Auburn, and within moments Wisteria appears in the same clearing as her. Auburn jumps to her feet and holds her knife in her shaking hand.

“I’ll use it,” she threatens. Her fear-filled eyes hone in on Wisteria.

Wisteria only laughs. “Yeah, I’m sure,” she says. “Let’s kill the Careers, and then we can figure out if you’d actually be willing to use that knife on me.”

Auburn stares at her for several long seconds as she contemplates her next move. Neither of them could face the Careers on their own, and they both know it. Finally Auburn nods slowly. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

Now we’re taken back to the Careers who are well aware that only six people still live—and four of them are in that very clearing as part of their alliance.

“We’ll split up,” the District 1 girl, Europa, says. “Two and two.”

“Or we could just wait until we hunt down the others,” the District 4 girl, Cove, suggests. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

Europa smiles in amusement. “I have no desire to be part of an alliance that has outlived its expiration date,” she says. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, but I’m afraid that this is the end of us.”

Cove nods. “Fine,” she says as she looks between the other three. “I guess there’s no point in keeping together an alliance that doesn’t want to be together.”

The District 1 boy, Ardor, then speaks up: “Should we stay with our district partners then?”

“I don’t see why not,” Europa says. “Unless anyone has any objection.”

The District 4 pair say no, they don’t have an issue with that. Then the four of them shake hands and vow that if they meet again in the arena, it will be not as allies but as competition. And with that, the Career alliance splits up, and the District 1 pair head one way while the District 4 pair head the other. Neither of the District 1 tributes seem fazed by the interaction, but the District 4 tributes exchange a quick, uneasy look between them before heading in the opposite direction.

Day Nine has been one event after another. Three tributes dead, one alliance formed, and a second alliance broken. Now there are three pairs of tributes left, and the end of the Hunger Games looms on the horizon. I’m clutching Pitch’s hand with too much force, and I apologize and release my grip.

“Juniper, I know that you don’t need me to tell you this, but don’t get your hopes up that Wisteria—”

“I know,” I cut him off sharply. Then, more quietly, “I know. I’m not.”

I glance at him and find him staring back at me. . . . And I realize that he didn’t say that for my sake but for his own. I wonder how many times he has said this to himself like it would really help him accept his tributes’ deaths.

“Did you say the same thing about me when I was a tribute?” I dare to ask him.

“Yes, but I didn’t believe it,” he answers.

“I could have died,” I say. “If my hand had slipped or something, I would have died.”

“I know,” he answers. “But you didn’t.”

“You couldn’t have known that, though,” I point out. “And then what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answers. “You’re alive.”

I can see that this conversation will have no end, so I drop it and turn back to the television. More commercials. I hate them all. The juxtaposition of the arena and this toothpaste advertisement makes me want to throw the television remote through the screen, but instead I turn the machine off altogether.


	38. Chapter 38

“I talked with Isolde yesterday,” I tell Pitch. We sit in a nearby park under the shade of a large tree. It’s almost private, except that it’s painfully clear that anyone walking by can see us. And, of course, I’m sure that there is some sort of device that can easily listen into our conversation. I pick up a small twig and twist it between my fingers.

“When you want back to the Training Center?” Pitch asks.

“Yes. She tried to explain to me why she reported me,” I say. “I don’t think I understand Career mindset at all, but I do understand that pitting us victors against each other is just a part of how they manipulate us.”

Pitch puts his arm around me and draws me closer to him. He leans in and whispers, “Careful, Juniper.”

I know I should be. But it gets harder and harder as time goes on to guard my speech, especially when I’m with Pitch. Guess I _am_ comfortable with him. I lean my head against his shoulder and pick at the bark on the stick in my hands to try to distract myself from my own thoughts.

“Is she holding up okay?” he asks me.

I shrug. “Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I don’t really understand how they do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“How Career mentors can be so enthusiastic about this all,” I say to him. “How they can be so optimistic and positive and gung-ho about leading kids off to die.”

“I think the lifestyle is so engrained in them that they don’t see it the same way as most of us, but don’t think that they don’t care,” he replies. “They just have to pretend that it doesn’t bother them to have their tributes killed year after year.”

Like what Isolde said and not wanting to be called a Career. It doesn’t matter what she wants—that’s just how it is.

“I also saw Daphne—” But before I can get my words out, both of our cell phones beep. I jump and fumble in my purse, but Pitch pulls his phone out first and scans the message.

He frowns. “Interview tomorrow morning,” he says.

My phone displays the same message. Ugh. I don’t want to answer more questions about our wedding. Caligula’s message sticks in my mind, weighing heavily on my brain. It bothers me that I don’t know if he was helping us or threatening us by saying what he did, and in some ways that’s more ominous than the words he spoke. Yet I can’t ignore the message: Pitch and I need to proceed carefully. Our “duty to our country” is a frightening thing to think about, especially when it’s very clear that we can’t ever escape it. I tuck my phone back in my purse and toss the little twig in my hands as far away as I can manage it. The gesture does little to alleviate the anger, and I lean in closer to Pitch in the hopes that that will make things better.

“I’ve been thinking about some of the topics that they might ask us about,” Pitch says.

“And then you find the most invasive questions you can within each topic?” I ask.

He snorts. “Yeah, somehow they manage to come up with some pretty insensitive questions,” he agrees.

I wonder if it is Caligula who writes the questions, or if somebody more powerful than him gives him a list of things to ask. I don’t know what I think about Caligula after the few interviews I’ve had, but I also don’t really care enough to think too hard about him.

“I expect that the age thing will come up again,” he says. “They seemed to harp on that quite a bit. As will the fact that I was your mentor.”

I rip a clod of grass and dirt out of the ground and heave it back down where it crumbles on impact.

“Why do they care?” I mutter, knowing that they care only because it makes us uncomfortable. I look at Pitch. “It doesn’t bother you, does it? That I’m younger than you?”

He gives me a wry smile. “No, it doesn’t. Of course, I never thought I’d be in a relationship with somebody so much younger, but I also never thought that I’d end up in a relationship with a former tribute I mentored, either,” he says.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” I ask.

“I had no interest in you when you were a tribute, or even after you won,” he answers steadily.

“Do you have interest in me now?” I prod. I don’t know if I really want an answer for this, but there’s something about how he said the last statement that makes me wonder.

“You are full of questions today,” he comments as he watches me closely, clearly avoiding my inquiry. My chest tightens when I realize that he had no intention of answering, and I don’t know if that means that he has no interest in me and doesn’t want to hurt me, or if he is interested in me and doesn’t want to freak me out. He continues, “Though I think it’s only fair for me to ask that it doesn’t bother you that you are younger than me.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I haven’t seen many people my age since I won, anyhow. It’s not like I got along great with most of my peers. I mean, I had some friends but . . . well, you saw those girls being interviewed last night. I wouldn’t exactly call them my friends.”

“But you get along with Esther and Isolde,” he points out.

“They’re different,” I say. “They don’t sit around talking about clothes or who they dated or popularity or anything like that.”

Pitch laughs. “You really enjoy being in the Capitol then, don’t you?” he teases.

I glare at him. “It’s like high school on steroids,” I say. Now instead of a bunch of teenagers worrying about whether their hand-me-down jeans were still worthy of the admiration of their peers, we get people who wear clothing for an hour and cast it aside because it is no longer desired.

My fingers wrap around a blade of grass and I tug a little more forcefully than needed. It snaps off and I throw it at Pitch. He flicks it off his leg and back at me, but it only flutters to the ground in the space between us. I move my leg close against him so that the space doesn’t exist, and then I throw another piece of grass at him. We play this stupid game for a bit like we’re dumb kids or something, and then the next thing I know Pitch is kissing me.

I pull away from him and glance around to see if anyone in the park is watching us beneath this tree. “Really?” I ask. “We’re practicing kissing now?”

“I’m not practicing,” he says. His grey eyes study me carefully, and I realize I have my answer. Pitch is interested in me—for whatever reason, he does like me. I find that I’m not surprised, at least not about that. Instead what concerns me more is the fact that knowing that he likes me doesn’t freak me out. When he kisses me again, I kiss back, and I don’t allow myself to think about the rest of the world or the people who might be seeing us, or the fact that this moment that we have isn’t private and may be picked up by hidden cameras somewhere and broadcasted as part of this evening’s news segment. Okay, maybe I am thinking about these things, but I find myself not caring. I wrap my arms around him and focus on his warmth and his lips against mine. He draws me closer to him and I feel his heart pounding against his ribs.

My cell phone beeps, once again startling me. I break away from Pitch and glance towards my purse. Our arms are still wrapped around each other, and I slip one arm away to allow my hand to fumble through my bag. My fingers wrap around the phone and I pull it out.

_Meet me at 7:00 PM. The Shire on 15 th Street. – Quintus_

My shoulders slump once I read the words, and I toss the phone back into my purse.

“What is it?” Pitch asks.

“I have a date tonight,” I tell him.

Pitch bristles at the news and he’s about to say something when I cut him off.

“He’s different,” I tell him. “I don’t know why, but he hasn’t, um, touched me.” I could explain in more detail, but I’m not sure it’s worthwhile. Quintus and I met in the backroom of his work, and I don’t know how private that was, but it was probably a heckuva lot more secure than being out here in the park where a dozen invisible cameras are no doubt watching us and picking up every bit of our conversation. I don’t know if that conversation with Quintus was public knowledge or not, and I don’t want to risk it.

“Yes, he’s strange,” Pitch admits, and I wonder (though perhaps I shouldn’t) what exactly the nature of their “relationship” was when I was in the arena. He clears his throat. “Be careful with him, Juniper. He’s powerful, and it’s easy . . . it’s easy to forget what that means when you become more _personal_ with these people.”

He knows because he’s been there, done that. And not just with Quintus. Lots of different powerful people who have the ability to demand the company and services of victors. Suddenly I remember something Isolde told me last year when we were trying to find apartments for me, and she mentioned some of the terrible people in various neighborhoods. One, in particular, happened to live just a few houses down from her, and the name stuck in my head even if I didn’t put things together at the time.

“Martha works on the arenas, doesn’t she?” I ask.

Pitch rubs his cheek. “Yes, she does,” he answers quietly. “And I was a fool to forget that.”

“No, I didn’t mean to imply that,” I say.

He looks me in the eye. “Yes, I was an idiot,” he says. “You don’t tell a lead arena designer ‘no’ and not expect to have one of her creations suddenly start working. You cannot let your guard down around Quintus, even if he’s nice to you.”

“And by nice, you mean not forcing me to have sex with him,” I mumble.

“Yes, that’s nice by these standards,” he says. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I answer. Way to make these “dates” with Quintus more stressful, I want to say. But I don’t because I know that Pitch is trying to help me not make the same mistake as him. “How long have you been with her?”

“A couple years, on and off,” he replies. “Sometimes there are people in between when she loses interest in me, but she always seems to want me back.”

He’s nothing more than something to keep her entertained. When designing arenas to kill off children isn’t exciting enough, she turns to the people who happened to make it past her disgusting creations. I wonder why Pitch and not someone else. And why she keeps making him come back to her.

“I’m sorry Juniper,” he says.

I furrow my brow. “What are you sorry about?”

“I’ve upset you,” he answers.

“ _You_ haven’t upset me,” I reply. “I knew ahead of time about this all. I just hate the fact that this is what happens.”

I wish I could kill her. I wish I could bring down my hatchet right into her chest. Not her face, because I want to see her expression as the weapon buries itself in her heart. But I know that I will never have that opportunity because it will get me nowhere. Maybe they wouldn’t kill me, but they’d kill everyone I love and let me waste away in a cell somewhere knowing that they’re all dead because my anger got the best of me. Still, I can’t help but think how satisfying it would be. . . .

I grasp another piece of grass and tug it out of the ground. But that does little to relieve the pressure building up inside of me, threatening to tear me apart in order to be free.

Pitch watches me intently, and I know that he knows how much I’m struggling with this. I hate that I can’t manage to control myself well enough to not burden him with something else.

I cast the piece of grass aside, pull him closer, and kiss him.

Immediately the anger subsides, and as he holds me against him, I feel that whatever else is going on out in the world doesn’t matter. His lips leave mine briefly and we catch our breaths, and then we’re back together again. I don’t know how much time passes; I don’t care. I don’t care if this entire thing is caught on camera, at least not here and now. Maybe I’ll think differently later, but right now being with Pitch is all that matters.


	39. Chapter 39

I’m almost late for my dinner with Quintus. It was so hard to drag myself out of the shower and put on proper clothes and makeup. I didn’t want to do any of it. I just wanted to stay with Pitch and watch him make himself dinner in my kitchen and pretend that Quintus doesn’t exist. But instead I pushed myself to keep moving because I don’t have that choice.

“You look lovely as ever, Juniper,” Quintus says as I walk up to him where he waits outside of the restaurant, casually sitting on the lip of a large planter. He stands up, takes my hand in his, and kisses it.

I smile, hoping that it doesn’t look nearly as forced as it really is. He kisses me on the cheek, and then we go into the building.

The restaurant is small and dark. I think they’re trying to make it atmospheric but I wonder if we’ll even be able to see our menus or the food that the staff lays out on the table before us. I stay close to Quintus as the host leads us through the restaurant, and I step carefully to avoid tripping over anything. Once we reach a table in a quiet, remote corner of the restaurant, Quintus pulls out a chair for me. We both take our seats opposite each other.

To my relief, this restaurant, while fancy, has neither menus in dead languages or spiritualists. The host leaves us to read through the menu, and a few minutes later a waitress takes our orders and disappears into the kitchen.

“I’m glad you were able to join me today,” Quintus says. “I apologize that it was so last minute.”

I nod. I don’t want to tell him that I didn’t mind that it was last minute because it meant I had to stress about it less. That would only give him the idea that it’s okay to send out last-minute invites whenever he wants to see me and then expect me to be there.

“You’re quiet,” he comments, his eyes looking me up and down for a moment before returning to my face. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m tired,” I admit. “There’s always so much to do whenever I come to the Capitol.”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose so,” he says. “The rest of us see the Hunger Games as a holiday, but you must work to make sure that we have the chance to enjoy ourselves for a couple weeks.”

I stare down at the white tablecloth and swallow back my anger. Yes, of course it’s a holiday for them. It’s torture for us. It’s murder for the people in the arena. And our sacrifice is what gives them a few days off from work each year so they can sit around and drink and place bets. But I can’t take my anger out on Quintus because whether he’s actually trying to help me or he is only playing with me, it doesn’t matter—I need to do what he says.

“I guess that’s true,” I finally say because it seems like the safest option. I force myself to look back up at him.

He watches me carefully before reaching out a hand and placing it on mine. “Then view this as a respite from all your work,” he tells me. “Just for an hour or two.”

“Yes, of course,” I say. My throat burns, and I move my hand away from his to grab the glass of water. I drain it in one gulp and thump it back down on the table a little harder than I meant to.

Quintus sits back in his chair and clucks his tongue. “It’s hard for you to relax, hmm?” he comments. “I could help you, if you want.”

“I, um, appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine,” I manage. I’m not sure what help he offers, nor do I want to find out. As soon as the words come out of my mouth, however, I immediately regret them. Didn’t Pitch tell Martha “no”? And what happened? Will something similar happen now? Who would he have killed if I don’t have a tribute? The questions race through my mind in a panicked frenzy.

“Juniper?” Quintus asks. He has to repeat my name a second time before I can look up at him. “If you are not up for dinner, we can go for a walk.”

No. I need to get myself under control. I have to be able to survive a simple dinner.

I shake my head. “Thank you, but I’m fine,” I lie. I sit up straight and try to convince myself that this is so. Somebody comes back and refills my water glass, and this time I try to exercise restraint and sip calmly rather than chugging the whole thing down in one go. Quintus watches me, and I feel like he’s grading my performance at being sane.

Finally when I feel like I can hold my own again, and set the glass down and risk a glance at Quintus.

“Um, how have you been lately?” I try.

My feeble attempt to be polite only makes him smile. “I’ve been doing well,” he says. “Watching the Hunger Games keeps me busy, I suppose, though I quite enjoy taking breaks to spend time with you.”

He spends a few minutes talking about how things have been from his end, but it’s all superficial: his perspective on the Hunger Games, how some tributes have performed better or worse than expected (which he implies might have affected his accounts), what the latest goings-on in the bookstore have been. This conversation does not interest me in the least, but I do my damnedest to at least make an effort to be an engaged listener.

The waitress brings us salad and bread first, of which I manage to eat a little while Quintus explains about a new book series he has read and he wants me to read, too, so that we can talk about it more in depth. It sounds vaguely like something I’d be okay with—not anything I’d pick out for myself, but also not something I’d try to avoid. From here I’m able to ask a few questions to show my moderate interest in the discussion. To my relief, we get through this part of the conversation and soon enough our dinners are brought out. And they’re actually dinners with food all on one plate, not multiple courses with each item served on a separate dish with pointless pieces of greenery as garnish.

At this point, Quintus wants to know what I’ve been up to, and I tell him that he pretty much knows everything already, especially if he watched the interview yesterday. He nods at this, and I pick at my food and eat small bites for fear I’ll choke if I try to swallow anything more.

“Yes, I did see the interview yesterday,” he tells me. “You two get quite a lot of attention, and rightfully so. Victors marrying is a truly remarkable thing . . . but I think you’ve heard enough about that already.”

“Thank you,” I say, and for once I’m actually thankful because I don’t want to prodded and poked again.

Quintus takes a bite of food, chews it carefully, and swallows before he says anything else. “You have another interview tomorrow,” he says.

I look up at him. How does he know that? Is it because of his powerful connections, or do they broadcast these things in advance?

“I want to talk to you about your interview,” he says.

“Did I do that bad?” I find myself asking.

He laughs. “Oh, no, nothing that I thought would warrant me saying anything about it,” he says. “You don’t have the desire to be on television, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. What _does_ bother me is that I don’t think you know what you’re walking into.”

My appetite vanishes. I set my fork down and stare at him. “What am I walking into?” I manage.

He takes a moment to casually look around the restaurant. The nearest people sit about fifteen feet away. Each table is spaced out from the others as though keeping people apart was the intention. As Quintus’ eyes scan the restaurant, I realize that maybe he brought me to this specific place for a reason—despite being in public, it’s as private as one could get. Apprehension gnaws on me, and I don’t think I can stand it anymore when he starts to talk again.

“How much has Pitch told you about his history here in the Capitol?” he asks me.

I don’t know how to answer that. “I know he, um, has people he meets sometimes,” I say. People like Quintus, I want to add. People who demand his attention in ways he doesn’t want but he can’t say no to without getting his family killed.

“Of course,” Quintus says thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose he could keep that part of his life secret to his fiancé. But I think it would be worth knowing that he might have a secret or two. . . . Maybe one that might surface in an interview, should the wrong people get ahold of it.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. My hands start to tremble, and I twist the cloth napkin between my fingers.

“Did Pitch ever tell you that he’s a father?”

My eyebrows shoot up and I stare at Quintus, not fully understanding what he said. This only earns a quiet laugh and a shake of his head.

“No, no he wouldn’t have told you that,” he says. “Just as he doesn’t claim the children are his own.”

“But he said that. . . .” My voice trails off before I can complete the sentence. _He can’t have children. He told me that he can’t._ I draw in a breath and stare at Quintus waiting for some sort of explanation—or maybe an apology for making a bad joke.

Quintus only says, “It was a byproduct of his services here in the Capitol.”

My mind goes blank. I don’t even know what to make of this. Of course I don’t have a problem with him having children, per se, but not like this. And I would have liked to have heard it from his own mouth and not from the likes of Quintus. The idea of Pitch having children is so . . . weird. Foreign.

_Deceitful?_

_No._

But why didn’t he tell me?

“They would really bring that up in an interview?” I ask carefully. “Are his, um, services well known?”

“People know that he’s dated many people in the Capitol, though of course they don’t know the extent, nor the fact that these relationships are often not his choice,” he says casually like this is just another conversation we’re having. “So I don’t suppose it would be too out there to dig up some dirt from his past and make sure that you’re aware of it.”

“What would be more exciting than that?” I say dryly.

“It certainly would bring good reviews,” Quintus says.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask him. “What’s in it for you?”

“Why do I need to have a reason?” he asks innocently. I stare at him, and he finally says, “Oh, fine. I’m quite fond of you, Juniper. I don’t want to see you get hurt because somebody decided to ask a question like that with the intention of throwing you off mid-interview.”

That seems too easy of an answer, but I say, “Thank you.”

He nods. “Yes, of course,” he says.

“Anything else I should be prepared for?” I ask.

“I think you’ve gotten a good feel for the types of questions they’re going to ask you, at least in general,” he says. “As far as if there’s any other dirty laundry that might be aired out. . . . Well, you’ll have to talk that over with your fiancé, not me.”

“Alright,” I answer. His eyes linger on me for a moment more before he turns back to his dinner and begins eating again. I pick up my fork and poke at the food on my plate before daring to take another small bite.

The conversation dwindles as we continue with our meal. I can’t eat much, but I try. At last, to my relief, the waitress finally comes and clears the dishes away. I stare at the place where my plate had been moments before and try not to think too much about what Quintus said. It’s either the truth or it’s a lie—and I’ll have to figure out directly from Pitch which one it is.

“I’ve given you a bit to think about,” Quintus comments. “So I won’t overwhelm you too much with anything else.”

“What else?” I ask, turning my attention to him.

“You sure?” he asks. An amused smile plays on his lips, and he takes a sip from his wine glass.

I glare at him. “You can’t just dangle information in front of somebody like that and expect them not to be curious,” I say with irritation.

“So you are right,” he agrees. “Though I suppose some people would prefer to be left in the dark.”

“Just tell me,” I say.

He nods. “Very well. You are not a woman who wants to be coddled,” he says. I pretend that I don’t hear that so that I can keep the irritation suppressed long enough to hear what he actually plans on telling me. “If anyone asks about me, I am merely your friend. A long-time supporter of you, and someone with whom you discuss literature (though unfortunately we haven’t progressed that far in our friendship, but that is not for them to know).”

“Why would they ask about you?” I ask.

“I’m sure that people have seen us around the Capitol,” he says casually as he leans back in his chair. “It works in your favor that you’re so damned stubborn that you insist on meeting me places rather than having me pick you up.”

He pauses when the waitress returns and places small custards at our place settings. But even when the waitress disappears, neither of us touch the desserts.

“Do people think that we have a relationship while I’m also engaged to Pitch?” I ask. But of course they do—otherwise it wouldn’t be an issue that Quintus would bother telling me about. Though even with that said, why does he care if people are saying these things? He might not be forcing himself on me, but he is putting me in awkward positions for the sake of his own entertainment; it’s not like he really wants me to be prepared for an interview. So this must mean that dating somebody who is already engaged to someone else reflects poorly on him, and he doesn’t want it to come across that way.

“You have really captured their attention,” he says. “For good and for bad—and there are some people out there who want to make this as miserable for you as they can. Me? I have no desire to see you have a mental breakdown on television, so I suppose it should be noted that some people are willing to _misinterpret_ situations in order to make things more exciting, and that will only be at your expense.”

Well this _really_ isn’t helping me get more comfortable with the interview situation.

“Why do people want to screw Pitch and me over so badly?” I ask him.

He sits up straight and picks up his spoon. “They don’t want to make things too easy for you,” he says as the spoon cuts into the custard. I reach for my own spoon as he continues, “Pitch is good at following orders—very good at it, until recently—but you, on the other hand, pose more of a danger. And there is talk that you might be a negative influence on dear Pitch.”

My hand freezes as I listen to his words, my fingers wrapped around the cool metal. _I_ am a bad influence for Pitch? What have I ever done wrong? I’ve followed everything they’ve told me to do, and I’ve really tried hard not to punch anymore Capitol citizens.

“It comes with the territory of being a volunteer from a non-Career district,” Quintus explains. “Every now and again, we get a volunteer who takes the place of a sibling or a classmate or someone that they really cannot bear to see go to the arena, but you, my dear, are another creature entirely. You volunteered for a girl who you barely knew, and there was no fear in your eyes when you climbed that stage.”

“So because I took the place of a handicapped girl that was going to get offed in the first three seconds of the Hunger Games, I marked myself as a potential threat,” I say bitterly.

He takes a bite of his custard, muses over what I said, and swallows. “Don’t forget that you were also an extremely capable tribute,” he adds. “Your temper may get the best of you sometimes, but it didn’t hold you back in the arena. What was your strength then may be your weakness now.”

I nod slowly. Although I sink my spoon into the custard and mush it around a little, I can’t force myself to take a bite. I’m sure I’m offending the entire waitstaff by not appreciating their gourmet food.

“But see, Juniper, what others fear, I quite admire,” he says. “I hope you can appreciate that.”

“Yes,” I say. I don’t have a choice in that regard—I _have_ to appreciate it, and not because Quintus’ power could be used against me but because his power might be the only thing protecting me right now.

“Keep Pitch on track, answer the questions they give you, and keep from drawing too much negative attention to yourself, and you will be fine,” Quintus assures me. But after all he’s told me, his words don’t do much to alleviate the stress that has been building up throughout dinner.

When Quintus finishes his dessert and pays for the bill, he says that it is time to leave. I stand up, grab my purse, and follow him through the restaurant and towards the door. We step outside into the evening air and begin walking down the sidewalk.

However we don’t get too far before he says, “Well, this was a nice evening. I do hope that next time we can discuss the books I recommended for you.”

“Thanks for dinner,” I manage because I can barely wrap my head around this current meal and the thought of yet another fine dining experience with this man might make me implode.

“I don’t suppose it would be appropriate for me to ask for a kiss?” he inquires.

“I thought we were just friends,” I say flatly. Or has he forgotten already the conversation we had? I don’t really understand this man or his actual reasons for wanting to be with me.

“Of course,” he answers. “But one can hope.”

I roll my eyes but lean over and kiss him on the cheek. That’s the most he’s getting out of me.

He smiles. “That might be the most genuine kiss you’ve given me,” he says. “I’ll take what I can.” And with that, he hails a cab for me and sends me on my way.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains discussion of rape (but no details).

I spend the entire cab ride trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I know that I have to talk to Pitch and at least ask him about these supposed children he has, but I also wonder if I even want to know. What if he has none and Quintus is just messing with me? But at the same time, what if he _does_ have children and it comes up in tomorrow’s interview? I might not be taken off guard, but Pitch would be. 

So when the cab arrives at my apartment, I thank the driver, transfer money into his account, and head straight into the apartment.

Pitch sits on the couch reading a book. I don’t even bother pausing to read the title is as I walk up to him and stand next to the couch.

“Everything okay?” he asks as he lowers the book.

“Yeah,” I say. “Want to take a walk?”

“Did he—?”

“No,” I cut him off quickly. “I’m just tired of wearing this stupid dress and I need exercise.”

He studies me carefully, but I find that I can’t meet his eye. So instead I leave the room and head towards my bedroom where I find something much more comfortable to change into. I half worry that Pitch will say that he’s too tired for a walk even though I know that he won’t be. He will embrace his love of nature anytime, any place. By the time I reemerge, he already has his shoes on and is grabbing a sweatshirt.

We end up once more on that mountain, the one far away from televisions and screens and prying people. Pitch brought water this time, so we walk quickly and cover good ground, ascending the mountain higher than we have before. I can’t bring myself to look out and appreciate the view of the city skyline or the great expanse of nothing on the other side of the mountain.

At last Pitch comes to a stop and says, “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Quintus decided to give me some advice for future interviews,” I begin. Pitch studies me carefully, watching for any sign of what’s bothering me before I can even get the words out of my mouth. I’m not even sure how to phrase this or if it would be best to start somewhere else, so I just lay it out: “He says that they might bring up the fact that you have children in the Capitol.”

Pitch doesn’t respond and I see him searching my eyes for something. His reaction makes me wonder if it was a lie and that Quintus was just trying to mess with me. But then my words seems to hit him at once and he slumps back against a large boulder and mutters, “Holy fuck. Okay. Shit.”

“So he was telling the truth,” I dare to say. “You told me that you couldn’t have children.”

He clears his throat and doesn’t say anything to me for a few long moments as he plans carefully how to proceed.

“It was . . . early on,” he starts. I watch him intently, but he only stares off in the distance towards the city lights that sprawl before us like splatters of paint on a dark canvas. “In the first few years, there were a couple of clients who would tell me that they were on birth control or that they couldn’t get pregnant or—well, one even told me that she _wanted_ me to get her pregnant—and sometimes it happened. I didn’t want them—I didn’t want _any_ of this—but of course I had no choice.

“I tried to, um, contribute financially. At first. But the woman didn’t want my help. She appeared to be happy enough to have the kid, and that was it, so she cut me out. I didn’t try with the others. I think maybe some would have been happy to have it made public, but others didn’t care.”

“How many are there?” I ask.

“I, um. Four,” he says. “That I know about.”

“That you know about,” I repeat. The wind vanishes from my lungs, and I move next to Pitch and lean back against the boulder for support. He has four children somewhere in the Capitol, and he doesn’t know if he has more. And he wanted none of them. They were merely trophies for these women.

“I got a vasectomy,” he says. “As soon as I could. They blocked me here in the Capitol, and they were going to rescind the medical license of anyone who did it in District 7, so I had to go elsewhere before they put any more restrictions in place.”

They made him sleep with people, and then they made him father children, and then they tried to prohibit him from saying no to having more children.

No, they don’t sell this as part of being a victor. They don’t tell us in school that everything about you is controlled so carefully that you can’t even choose whether you become a parent or not. My chest aches, and it hits me then—really hits me—how fucked up Pitch’s life after victory has been. I’ve known it this entire time, but now that I understand the depth to which he has been controlled, I want to set the whole damned city on fire.

“They’d be almost teenagers now. Some of them, at least,” Pitch says quietly. “I don’t think about them too much—I can’t. Sometimes I wonder if I should have tried harder to be a part of their lives, but then I think it would be better that they don’t know me. And—and I just tell myself that it’s better that they’re here in the Capitol and not in District 7 where they could be reaped and sent to the arena.”

“They . . . wouldn’t send them to the arena, even if they knew that you were the father?” I ask, suddenly terrified that these random kids I don’t know and didn’t even know existed until a couple hours ago will be thrust into the hell that is the Hunger Games. No kid should have to endure that, Capitol or otherwise.

“I don’t think they can,” he tells me. “They’re Capitol citizens, not district citizens. And their mothers all live in the Capitol, so it would defeat the purpose to reap them because then it would be punishing the Capitol and not the districts.”

I exhale with relief.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before,” Pitch says. I look at him and he dares to glance at me ever-so-briefly before his eyes drop away. “It’s, um, it’s not something I think about often, or at least I try not to. And I, um, I guess I didn’t want to burden you with something else. I never would have thought that it would be the subject of an interview. . . .”

“It would have been nice to have heard it from you and not from Quintus,” I admit. “But at least I know now. . . .”

Pitch rubs his forehead and turns his attention back to the city. He clenches his jaw and disappears in thought, his eyes unfocusing into the distance.

I turn away from him and watch the lights glitter. They seem to extend forever before they come to a complete stop on the other side of the valley. That must be where the riverwalk is, I suppose. Where Pitch took me when we were waiting for our tributes to get made over for their interviews. And when we returned, we were accused of neglecting the tributes to fulfill our own sexual desires. The rumors and accusations horrified and embarrassed me, but Pitch just rolled with it; I suppose that he has been so used to being intimate with so many people that it just didn’t faze him.

“Is there anything else I should know?” I ask despite knowing that this conversation alone has been more than he can bear. But we can’t take the time to discuss things in due course; tomorrow we will once more be displayed for all of Panem to see, and I don’t want any surprises.

Pitch swallows hard and licks his lips.

“I have been out to other districts, to those various resorts we discussed the other day,” he tells me. “Usually to accompany people whose service I was in. They’d want to take a vacation, and decided that going to various resorts would be the best. There are a few in District 7, nowhere near us, of course, and a couple in other districts, too. Sometimes—just every once in awhile—I’d go by myself just to get away from everything.”

“Pitch,” I say. He’s shaking. Crying. Desperately trying to hold himself together.

“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you before,” he repeats, his voice heavy and quavering. “If you don’t want to marry me. . . . I guess I can’t blame you.”

“What the hell?” I ask. He doesn’t seem to hear me, so caught up is he in his own world. Anger bursts through me in a sudden and enraged fire. This is not Pitch’s fault; the Capitol did this to him—they put him in the arena, tortured him, promised him life, and then destroyed him one piece at a time. And why? Why for their own entertainment, of course. To keep him in line. To control him. Because they just wanted to have fun and mess with their victor. And now he’s struggling to keep from falling into a thousand pieces as he’s being torn apart by the guilt and fear and anger and whatever else because the women who raped him bore him children that he has no idea how to handle and likely hasn’t seen since they were infants, and he was forced to go along with it all like it was some great holiday.

I throw my arms around him and hold him tightly. He clings to me and buries his head in my hair and starts to sob. The more he cries, the angrier I become, and the harder I grasp him.

“Pitch, I’m not leaving you,” I promise. He doesn’t respond as he releases emotions that have been pent up far too long. I don’t even care that he’s getting my hair all messed up, or that his tears and maybe even mucous are on my skin.

After a few minutes, he calms down enough that he can bring himself under control. My arms ache, but I won’t let go of him. He reaches up and wipes my cheek dry and then kisses it gently.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. This time I think he might be talking about the mess he made because he’s running his sweatshirt sleeve across my hair. But then he mumbles, “I should have told you. I just didn’t know how. Didn’t want to think about it. And I have completely messed up your hair.”

“My hair is the least of our problems,” I tell him gruffly as I try to hold back my overwhelming anger. They would have _loved_ to see this on camera, to have watched Pitch just completely break down and to have me witness it. I don’t know why, and I don’t really know who is orchestrating this, but it would have pleased someone out there. “Quintus told me that we have proceed carefully because they think I’m a bad influence on you.”

Pitch looks at me. Even in the darkness, I see the residual tears in his eyes. But now there’s confusion, too. So I clarify, “Because I ‘volunteered’ for somebody I didn’t really know, I guess I marked myself as someone for them to watch. And then you suddenly start telling people no, so they put two and two together. . . .”

“And came out with five,” he mutters. “That’s bullshit. But . . . believable that they would jump to their own incorrect conclusions. What else did he tell you?”

“That I should tell everyone that he and I are just friends, and that all you and I need to do is play along with whatever they tell us,” I answer. Simple enough, but certainly not simple in practice.

“Is there anything in your past that might be worthwhile digging up?” he asks me.

“I’m just your average teenage murderer,” I say wish a shrug. “I don’t know what they’d get out of searching my records except for some mediocre grades and a spotty social history. Maybe the one time that I was accidentally put in band instead of woodshop and I stole an oboe out of the classroom and lost it?”

Pitch makes a sound akin to laughter, but it’s heavy and clouded by other things. “A musical instrument thief?” he asks.

“I was fourteen,” I say. “Fortunately I turned away from petty crimes when they put me in the right class.”

“Stealing woodwinds might be a felony,” Pitch teases. Then he pulls me closer to him so that there is no space between us and holds me tightly. I try not to think about everything that’s happened this evening. I listen to his heart thump rapidly in his chest against me and close my eyes. After a few moments, he whispers, “Tomorrow, when we’re on the set and they’re interviewing us, think of being here where we can see the city without being in the city.”

“I will,” I tell him. And just to make sure that I can recall it when the bright lights pound down upon me, I focus on the way he holds me and how calm it makes me, and I try to commit it to memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr - The chapter in which Pitch has a breakdown. Also he has at least four kids out in the Capitol. And also Juniper wants to light the city on fire.


	41. Chapter 41

The interview is delayed because the Career tributes from District 1 nearly come across Auburn and Wisteria, and they cannot possibly have an interview playing while something exciting happens on television. So Pitch and I sit in the interview room on a couch in the corner watching the Hunger Games on a small screen while we wait for our turn for the spotlight. But it’s a near miss in the arena: neither pair of tributes realizes that the other is close, and the Careers venture out onto a blackened field of cooled lava while Auburn and Wisteria plunge further into the forest.

This gives Pitch and me enough time to try to pull ourselves together and embrace the fact that this interview won’t be pretty. I’d like to just get it all over and done with, but I instead try to be comfortable with Pitch’s arm around my shoulder knowing full well that people stare at us in passing and that having our interactions picked apart diminishes the comforting aspects of his touch. Occasionally Pitch leans over and whispers something to me to try to get me to relax a little, but it only lasts for a few seconds before I’m alert once again.

You’d never guess that Pitch had a breakdown yesterday. He manages to clean up very well after falling apart, and he looks like the same Pitch as always. He’s even managed to stay present and not space out as much as he has been recently. And here I am just trying to not throw up on everyone, and probably looking like I’m just barely containing myself.

Caligula finally comes over when it’s clear that there will be no more excitement in the arena and motions us over to the set.

“Thank you for your patience,” he tells us as he leads the way through equipment and cameras. “It’s great to have you two back, and so soon!”

 _Yes because I’m sure that this is just another casual interview,_ I think. But I take my seat next to Pitch and he puts his arm around me once again, and I do my damnedest to look like I want to be with him, even if I don’t want to be here in this interview.

Caligula checks on us before he begins, then he turns to his camera for his introduction and we are off into the interview without another thought.

 _You’re okay,_ I tell myself. _You can handle this. Pitch can handle this. You will be fine._

But despite the pep talk, I remain unconvinced.

“Now, you two were just with us here the other day, and it’s a complete pleasure to have you back so soon,” Caligula says. “After your interview, there were many people who were just ecstatic to see you with us and to be able to share your journey through your brief engagement, but there were also quite a few questions that people wanted answered that we didn’t touch on, if at all.”

Okay, here we go. I take a deep breath and focus on Pitch’s warmth next to me, trying to absorb it all and hold it close.

“So thank you again for taking time out of your schedules to be here,” Caligula says.

“It’s our pleasure,” Pitch replies and I realize what a great liar he actually is.

Caligula beams at him. “Now, we got a lot of questions asking about your wedding itself—what colors you chose, who is in the wedding party, whether you’re going to have dancing. Many of the weddings I’ve been to have been quite large in comparison to what you guys are planning, so do you think you can share with us a little more of what you have in mind?” he asks.

This is okay. This is do-able. Last night before we went to bed, Pitch and I stayed up to talk about some of the stupider things about weddings. Although most of it dissolved into both of us cursing how pointless and dumb wedding ceremonies are, we were able to make some headway.

“As we mentioned before, we plan on keeping it very small,” Pitch tells him easily. “I don’t think that we even bothered with colors, or with a wedding party.”

“No, we haven’t done either,” I confirm. “And there really won’t be many people there, so no point in having dancing.”

“That’s too bad,” Caligula says. “As jealous as I am that you two are having such a small wedding (though my wife says that I’m not supposed to say that on television—hahaha!), you really do miss out on some of the nicer aspect of the event.”

“We prioritized a smaller wedding so that we could marry sooner, so unfortunately that means that other aspects of it had to be ignored,” Pitch answers.

“I’ve realized you two are pretty eager to get married. Is there a reason?” Caligula asks. I know with 100% certainty that he will soon ask me if I’m pregnant, but he’s going to give us the chance to share with them the news before he starts prying.

Pitch shrugs. “Juniper and I have been together for a year, and we’re just ready to start that part of life,” he says, sticking with what he originally stated a couple days ago.

“Juniper, I hesitate to ask but we really must know: You don’t happen to be, ahem, you know?” Caligula asks.

“Pregnant?” I suggest, the irritation miraculously suppressed from my words even though it burns my tongue. “No, I’m not. I just don’t see the need to wait months to get married. I don’t want any of the frivolities, so I don’t see why we need to extend out the engagement.”

“Of course, children might be in your future,” he says. “There have been rumors, though, that perhaps there already are children.”

There is it. Something that he is wiggling into the interview to make way for _the topic_ that Quintus warned me about. Pitch flinches so very slightly; I can pick it up because I am sitting next to him, but I’m sure that the cameras do not. But I play dumb and say, “I need to get through school first.”

“You are very down-to-earth,” he says. “Good for you. I think Pitch has chosen very wisely; he found a quite a lovely woman.”

I’d be flattered if I didn’t want to throttle him. But I just smile and thank him politely and remember that Pitch is here with me and that I can get through this.

But to my surprise, the next question does not further pursue the topic of children. Instead, Caligula goes about a different route: “Juniper, your engagement has been very fast, and many people are suspecting that you might not have had time to even _think_ about getting a pretty dress.”

“Oh. Well, that might be true. . . .” I admit. Which is kind of not the truth because I _have_ thought about it, and I don’t want one. There’s no point in spending money and buying a dress and wearing it once. But that is not a sentiment well appreciated in the Capitol.

“Mmmhmm, yes, we were afraid that was the case,” Caligula says, and I really don’t like the sound of that. “Well, we do have some people who would be _very_ thrilled to help you out so that you will have a dress in time for your wedding.”

I want to tell him no and that I will be fine on my own, but I’d be stupid to do so. After the warnings, I know I need to maintain appearances and keep on friendly terms with the people of the Capitol.

“Thank you,” I say to him. “That would be, um, nice.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Caligula says, his face lighting up. He doesn’t elaborate on whatever is planned, but I’m sure I’ll be hearing about it soon enough. “You will make a beautiful bride. Don’t you think so, Pitch? Oh, of course you do, why am I asking?” He then starts laughing at his own words.

Pitch squeezes my arm slightly. A reminder to stay calm and not get too angry. I glance at him and he gives me a small smile, neither of us impressed by Caligula’s humor but at least both understanding that it’s bullshit.

“Now, Pitch, I know that you wanted a small wedding, but if you wanted a wedding that was larger, would you—”

But Caligula doesn’t get out the question before he gets some sort of alert on the tablet that sits on the table next to him.

“Oh, goodness,” he says after a few seconds. “It looks like there is some excitement happening in the arena!”

Excitement? I keep my expression as neutral as I can as I wait for him to continue. He takes a few more seconds to read over the information and then he looks back at us. Whatever it is, it must be “good” news because he looks eager to share with us what is going on.

“Pitch, Juniper, I’m afraid we might have to take a break,” he says to us.

“That’s not a problem, Caligula,” Pitch says. “The Hunger Games are a priority.”

“Hang tight, folks, as we check out what’s happening with our tributes,” Caligula says to the cameras. Then somebody on the crew says that we are no longer live, and the cameras are turned off. Caligula raises himself from his seat and comes over to us, but we no longer hold his full attention, and he’s eager to get to a television to see what’s going on. “Why don’t you guys just hang tight back on that couch, and when things settle down, we can begin again?”

“Sure, thanks,” Pitch answers for us, and we stand up without requiring further prompting. It takes little time for us to clear out of the way of the cameras and set and return to the quiet couch we had been waiting in. There is, of course, the television right here so we can see everything that’s happening in real time.

And right now, the District 4 pair has found Wisteria and Auburn, and it’s clear that the Careers have the upper hand.

Pitch’s fingers interlock with mine as we sit huddled on the couch, our eyes unable to move away from the screen.

The four tributes are no longer in the jungle but are now along the banks of the lava river. The red-orange liquid flows by them, popping and bubbling and spattering onto the solid ground as it passes. I know that we’re about to watch Wisteria get killed, but all I can think is how strange it is that they didn’t keep the cameras on us while it happened. _Probably because Wisteria wasn’t Pitch’s tribute,_ I think. _If that had been Sage, then they would have done it no doubt._

The pair from District 4, swing their weapons to intimidate their prey as they force Auburn and Wisteria closer and closer to the river. The boy, Marlin, spins the spear in his hand, ready to throw it at a moment’s notice. The girl, Cove, has a net in one hand and a trident in the other. Meanwhile, Auburn has a knife and Wisteria has a hammer. Not only are the two girls inferior in skill, but also in weaponry. And they’re pinned with no way to escape unless they throw themselves into the fiery river.

Neither of the District 4 tributes can use their weapons to their full power without fear of losing them in the river, but they don’t need full power. They just need to use the bare minimum to pick off these pesky tributes who stand between them and victory. A thrust of the spear or trident is all that is needed to be one cannon closer to escape.

The District 4 boy lunges forward, the spear aimed directly for Auburn. The girl dodges just in time, but the metal tip tears the skin on her arm. She cries out. Wisteria lunges forward and grabs onto the spear’s shaft. With one good yank, she tears it from Marlin’s hands, catching him when he’s off balance. She thrusts the spear into the lava river, and it catches on fire and slowly starts to sink.

Marlin cries out in anger and lunges towards her, but Wisteria moves out of the way. Unfortunately Cove’s trident finds her, and one of the three tines stabs into her abdomen. Wisteria wails as Cove draws back the weapon, its slick tips now wet with Wisteria’s blood. Wisteria grabs onto her side, clasping her bleeding wound, and staggers away from the District 4 tributes. To their relief, the District 4 tributes have been distracted with the loss of the spear, and it provides enough time for Wisteria and Auburn to stagger away, back into the cover of the jungle.

“Elm. . . .” I breathe. Pitch breaks away from the screen to look at me curiously. I lean into him and whisper, “He might not be sober enough to take care of her. I need to go—”

“Absolutely not,” Pitch hisses, his breath warm on my cheek. “You can’t.”

“But Wisteria—”

“Juniper, listen to me.” He keeps his voice low, but the words are still stern. His lips are close to my ear to avoid others overhearing, and his words come out rushed. “You cannot help him. He made a decision, and he will need to deal with it.”

“She could _die_ , Pitch,” I snap.

“I’m sorry, Juniper,” he answers. “If I let you go, so could you.”

My heart pounds in my chest. “ _You’re_ not doing anything,” I say. “I am. So she has no reason to kill me.”

Pitch moves his arms around me, but his tight grip removes any hint of comfort in the gesture. He’s trying to keep me from moving, and he’s stronger than me, so it’s working. I could potentially throw his arms off, but it would require a struggle, but that would call attention to ourselves.

“No,” he says firmly. “You already have a formal complaint against you. We need to stay quiet as it is. I know it hurts, but Elm has made his decision, and I won’t allow you to risk your life for this.”

I hate it. I hate the cruel words pouring out his mouth. The lips in which I had found comfort now bring nothing of the sort. He wants me to abandon that girl in order to save myself, and although I know that he’s trying to protect me and he’s being logical about it, I can’t suffer the heartless things he’s saying. My chest heaves, and I don’t bother trying to get in control of myself until Pitch says, “You need to breathe. You need to calm down. You can’t let them see you like this.”

I can’t. They’re sadistic, terrible monsters. I hate them all. I hate every last bastard in this very room, laughing and clapping each other on the shoulders and making comments about who has money on what tribute and what the outcome from this interaction will be.

“I am right here. I am with you,” he reassures me. “Don’t think about what’s on screen.”

I nod and close my eyes for a few seconds to try to force myself back under control. I focus on Pitch’s hands grasping onto me. Slowly, so very slowly, I begin to calm down enough. Not entirely, but just enough that I don’t look like such a raging lunatic sitting here on this couch in the corner. Pitch begins to release his grip, and we adjust ourselves so that we’re once again facing the television, his arm around my shoulder, like nothing has happened at all. I throw a glance around the room. If anyone had noticed anything, they don’t give any indication. Instead they watch the screens placed around the room, their equipment and cameras long abandoned.

Minutes pass. The cameras alternate between the District 4 pair, who have at last given up the spear as lost, and Auburn and Wisteria. Neither of the latter fare well. They both clutch bleeding wounds, though Wisteria’s is far more serious.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. I could be in the District 7 apartment by now, and I could have woken up Elm and helped him figure out what he could send Wisteria. Thirty minutes. Wisteria grows weaker. Surely there was enough money from the various donations she’s received to buy something that could at least stop the bleeding. _Please, Elm,_ I think. _Do something._

Forty minutes after the fight, the televisions still focus on the two pairs of tributes, though more on Wisteria and Auburn.

“I’m going to go talk with Caligula, or at least his assistant,” Pitch tells me. I start to get up, and he sits me back down. “Stay here. I’ll be back—I promise. Okay?”

“Okay,” I croak, and I watch him stand up and walk away.

My attention shifts back to the television. Maybe there is some sponsor out there who will decide that Wisteria is worth saving, and that they want to help the single mother who has made it to the final six tributes. She did kill the District 12 pair without blinking—maybe they think she can hold her own against the Careers.

Fifty minutes, and Pitch finally returns. He lowers himself back into the seat next to me, and the couch sinks slightly with his weight.

“The assistant will talk with Caligula when he has a break,” Pitch says, and it takes me a stupid second to connect the fact that Caligula who we know in person here is also the same Caligula whose voice is being projected from the television as we watch it. I don’t know where he went, but he still has his job to keep up with Janice Lovely and banter about the various goings-on in the arena. Certainly he wouldn’t have wanted to miss that fight and the subsequent injury-related deaths.

Around sixty minutes, Wisteria can’t hold herself upright anymore. She grasps onto the trunk of a tree and teeters there for a few minutes before she collapses to her knees. The pain is immense—unbearable—and she flops over onto the ground. Auburn kneels by her side and rolls her over so that she faces the canopy of trees above their heads. The District 6 girl attempts to stave off the flow of blood, but to no avail.

“He’s not sending any sponsorship gifts,” I murmur.

“He might not have any,” Pitch tries to explain, but I barely hear him because all I can think is that if I had been able to go there when this first happened, then I could have _done something_ to help Elm help Wisteria. I had seen the amount of money in the bank—there were some leftovers, so certainly there might be something I could have bought to send to her. Even if there wasn’t enough for a strong healing ointment, surely we could have sent her a small medical kit.

An hour and a half from the fight, Wisteria still gasps for breaths and Auburn still sits by her side. She has a wad of fabric wrapped around Wisteria’s wound, or more likely shoved into the wound and held in place by the uniform shirt adjusted at an angle to keep the cloth from sliding. Auburn has neglected her own wound—which pales in comparison to Wisteria’s—and hold’s Wisteria’s hand.

Somebody comes by and offers us refreshments. I stare at the television screen while Pitch tells him that we’re good.

Nearly another half an hour passes before Wisteria gasps for one last breath and falls silent. For a long second, I allow myself to believe that she’s still alive, but then the cannon fires and I know that she is gone.

Ten minutes go by, and finally Caligula’s assistant walks up to us.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says. “But Caligula agrees that it would be best to reschedule the remainder of the interview.”

“Thank you,” Pitch says politely. The guy nods and leaves the two of us to ourselves. Pitch stands up, offers me his hand, and the two of us leave the bustling interview room.

We spend the remainder of the day going through the motions of being alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That awkward moment when you're tired of writing interviews and decide to kill off characters instead.


	42. Chapter 42

“They didn’t ask you about your children,” I say to Pitch as we sit underneath a tree in the park. A different tree from last time, just to spice things up or whatever. He has his arms around me, and I lean against his chest.

Neither of us have spoken about yesterday’s interview, or the events that drew it to a premature end. I don’t know what I could even say about Wisteria’s death; it’s the Hunger Games and people die. I would rather have completed the interview than have had to watch her die, but no amount of wishing for things to be different will have changed what happened. Instead I try to block out the thoughts that barrage my brain and tell me that things would have been different if Pitch had let me go to help Elm. _It’s not his fault,_ the logical part of me tells myself. And yet the ache in my chest tells me differently.

“No, but they left it open for further inquiry,” he answers. “But Juniper, really—I am honestly sorry I didn’t tell you about that. You shouldn’t have had to hear it from Quintus or from anyone else.”

I pick absently at the watch on his wrist. No, I shouldn’t have heard it from Quintus, but I don’t really know how annoyed I am because I didn’t hear about it from Pitch. I don’t think he was keeping it a secret because he was trying to trick me, but because he was trying to ignore that part of his past since he didn’t know how to handle it.

“Do you think it will come back up?” I ask. I want him to tell me no, that Caligula asked that question as mere coincidence, even though it’s not.

Pitch nods slowly. “Yes, unfortunately I think it will,” he says. “I don’t know if Caligula intended to ask more questions about it later in the interview, or if he was going to leave it as it was, but I don’t think that this is the last we’ll hear about it. I hesitate to say it, but . . . I think Quintus might have had a valid warning.”

“He bought us some time,” I add.

“I think so.”

That doesn’t really make sense. I still don’t understand Quintus’ motivations or even what his end goal is. He says he wants to protect me, and in return he just wants my company . . . but even that doesn’t make sense. Why would he go out of his way to help me just so that we can go on dates to fancy restaurants?

“Do you know the children’s names?” I dare to ask. I twist slightly in his grip so that I can see his expression.

“Yes,” he says. But he doesn’t offer up any more information about them. As much as I want to pry, I know that some things are best left alone. Yet this only generates more questions: who are these kids and what are they doing right now? Are they aware of who their father is, or have their mothers kept them in the dark?

“Do you want to see them again, if you got the chance?”

Pitch hesitates. “I-I don’t know,” he admits. He lets out a breath and looks at me. “I’ve thought about it . . . in the past. But I knew that it didn’t matter what I wanted, so I just . . . tried to avoid thinking about it.”

“What are you going to say if the Capitol asks you?” I ask him. Because if this really does get out, then I’m sure the Capitol would _love_ to hear Pitch’s thoughts on everything. And mine, too, I realize. But my opinions on this don’t really matter that much compared to Pitch’s. They’re not my kids after all.

“I, um, I wouldn’t mind meeting them, but I don’t want to upset their lives,” he says after a few seconds’ thought. “Right now, they don’t that I’m their father, I think, and they probably live their lives in complete obliviousness. I can’t imagine that any good would come out of knowing who I am to them.”

“Maybe they admire you,” I say in an attempt to maybe make things more neutral since optimism is pretty much out of the question for this problem.

“Maybe they prefer a different district,” he answers.

This is true—they might be disappointed that their father isn’t from one of the Career districts.

“Do you think anyone at home even caught that question and what it means, though?” I ask. “Nobody said anything about _you_ having children; it seemed to be more about _us_ having children.”

“People look too much into things as it is,” he replies. “They will no doubt see into Caligula’s question whatever they want to see, regardless of who it was aimed for.”

I fall into silence. Although questions threaten to fall from my mouth, I keep them inside and hold onto them tightly. They don’t make sense, or they would hurt Pitch, or something. I don’t know. But I’m not ready to ask them yet. I run my thumb over the smooth watch face on Pitch’s wrist. A few days ago, he had his monitoring device instead, but now that he’s free from mentoring, he’s allowed to wear his own watch.

“I need to get ready,” I say to him.

“Get ready?” he asks.

“Yeah, I received a text yesterday that I have to go wedding dress shopping this afternoon.”

He shakes his head. “Our interview was interrupted because Wisteria was killed, and then they demand that you go dress shopping the next day,” he mutters. “Brilliant.”

“I know,” I say. “I don’t even want a dress.”

“But you’re going to get one anyhow,” he says. Not a question. I need to play along and get a dress and not make too much of a fuss about it. I know this; I’m not stupid. “If you need me to go with you. . . .”

“They already specified that you aren’t allowed to come,” I tell him. “I guess they anticipated that you might try.”

“Damned traditions,” he responds. “Well, if it’s any comfort, we can go for a walk afterwards.”

“Pitch, you love walks so much, it makes me wonder if you’re secretly a dog,” I say.

“Yes, that will be what they bring up at the next interview,” he responds. He kisses my temple. “C’mon, let’s get moving then.”

But neither of us move. Instead I lean my head back against his shoulder, and he readjusts his hold on me, and we close our eyes and listen to the breeze playing with the leaves above our heads and the shouts of kids on the play equipment and the barking of a dog in the distance.

I hate shopping and have never wanted to go to the store just for the sake of going to the store; today is no different. The beauty of being a victor and always having what I need is that dresses just seem to appear in my closet, so I never have to bother going shopping myself. Thus, I have never had a reason to go to a store in the Capitol, and today I feel quite out of my element when I walk into the wedding boutique at the designated time.

A woman wearing reams of brightly-colored fabric greets me the moment I step inside the store and introduced herself as Samus. She assures me that today will be the second best day in my life—next to my wedding day itself, of course—and ushers me back into the store. For a place that sells wedding dresses, it’s surprisingly empty. Actually, I don’t know anything about wedding dress shopping, so maybe I’m wrong. All I know is that aside from a few displays of dresses, there is nothing but a large pedestal and several sets of mirrors. It reminds me of when I was first brought to the Capitol and they made me stand on a pedestal like that while my stylist put the finishing touches on my parade outfit.

To my utter relief, Esther comes up and greets me.

“They said you would be here, but I didn’t know if you’d make it,” she says with a large smile. “This is going to be much more fun with you here.”

I don’t know if that means that she was already going to be having fun and now it’s actually more fun, or if she wasn’t going to have fun and now my presence makes it tolerable.

“Thanks,” I say. “They didn’t tell me that you’d be here, so that’s a nice surprise.”

Not only do I know someone here—someone decent—but it also means that not all the attention will be on me.

We don’t get much time to contemplate it before a sharply-dressed man named Mario appears and tells us that we will be trying on dresses with the help of assistants in changing rooms, and then come out to see ourselves in the mirrors. So they separate us and whisk us away. In the changing room—which is quite spacious and holds several other people who are there to assist me in and out of garments—they go over a few styles of dresses. I choose the ones that have the least volume.

“I want to fit through doorways,” I tell them, and people laugh as though I’m being silly. I swallow the irritation on my tongue and let them undress me and dress me again in whatever dress they choose. Then the march me out to the pedestal and help me up and turn me around and ooh and aah and click their tongues and tell me very boldly what is wrong with the dress and, more importantly, me. Dresses can be hemmed and altered, but the shape of one’s body cannot without serious work. Then after a brutal assessment of my physical flaws, they lead me back into the dressing room, undress me again, and put me in a dress that they say will be more flattering.

So the process repeats over and over.

And over.

I think about being back in my apartment curled up on the couch with Pitch and a book. Better yet, I think about being back in District 7 on a quiet afternoon. We’re doing nothing of great important but just being together.

I lose track of how many dresses they put on me.

“It would look nice in a little deeper shade,” says one woman. “Maybe a hint of pink, or at least champagne.”

A man shakes his head. “You are an odd one to work on,” he tells me. I don’t ask what that means, but then he mutters something about how I’m not _nearly_ as dark as I was when I came out of the arena, and that’s quite a disappointment. He points out to someone that my chest is much lighter than my arms which is so difficult to work with. Then he asks me, “Are you going to be spending time in the sun between now and then?”

Before I can answer, a woman suggests that we take me to a sun clinic to see if they can even out my skin tone.

“Maybe I can have a dress that doesn’t show my chest?” I say in the desperate hope that I won’t be subjected to any Capitol treatments. I don’t bother to tell them that when I left the arena, I had been under the sun for well over a week, and I didn’t give a shit about how that affected my complexion.

“But, honey, we want you to look perfect for your wedding, and I’m sure Pitch would want you to wear the most flattering dress possible,” the man says.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem to find something that covers her chest,” says a woman. “Unless she has any enhancements done, low-cut dresses might not be aimed towards her body type.”

In other words, I have small boobs and there’s no point in showing cleavage that I don’t have.

I wonder if they’re tearing Esther apart like this. I grit my teeth and will myself to remain calm. I hate what they’re saying about me, but I hate to think that they’d do anything of the sort to Esther. She’s been through enough as it is, and she actually _wants_ a wedding. I don’t, so I don’t care if they ruin the “experience” for me.

The people murmur between themselves and make little comments that I try to ignore before they lead me back into the dressing room to try on something else. When I re-emerge the next time, Esther is on the pedestal. She wears a gorgeous white dress that looks great on her, and she must know it, too—she smiles at her reflection as she turns this way and that to admire the intricate beadwork and lace.

Several people complement her and tell her how beautiful she looks and it’s the perfect dress for her. A couple more start pointing out things that really “don’t work” for Esther and that she might need to try on something different.

“Just shut up,” I snap at them, and immediately everyone turns their attention to me. “She looks damned good in that dress, so don’t go trying to force her into anything else.”

Esther blushes and clasps her hands together. The other people all say things to reassure her that the dress is perfect. When I look at Esther again, she averts her eyes to the floor, but the happiness is still on her face.

They let Esther admire the dress for a little longer as they make comments about alterations so that it better fits her, and they ask her what changes she would like to see done. She can’t stop smiling as she talks, nor even when she steps off the pedestal and goes back to the changing room.

Then it’s my turn, and they have me step on the pedestal. I hate this dress pretty much the same as most of the others, and I only have to stay there a minute or two and listen to a few scathing critiques before they take me back to swap out another dress. When I come back out in the trillionth dress, I see that Esther is changed back into her street clothes and sits on a bench between a couple of people to finish watching the event. She doesn’t speak much, but when she does, it’s to offer me complements and kind words; not a single rude thing comes out of her mouth.

At long last they decide on a dress that looks somewhat decent on me, and now I have to stand there on the pedestal and listen to them talk about the alterations they’ll make. I don’t understand half of it, but at this point I’m too exhausted to care.

“This will be an absolute work of art when we’re done,” says Mario as he helps me down off the pedestal. “I know it’s hard to envision now, but you’re going to be absolutely stunning.”

He hands me off to the people in charge of changing me, and they take me to the changing room and begin to strip off the dress. Then they help me back into my own clothes, talking about weddings and how glorious mine will be if the dress is altered _just right_ and that I’ll be absolutely _perfect_. I let them lead me out of the dressing room back into the main room where I collapse on the bench next to Esther.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she says happily.

I stare at her, and she bursts out laughing at my expression. Which only causes me to laugh, but it’s a weary sort of laugh that doesn’t fully reach my core.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says, and I have no objections to that.


	43. Chapter 43

“So you’re really on board with this marriage thing,” I say to Esther as we step out into the bright lights of the Capitol streets. I try to ignore the great banners advertising the Hunger Games, and the “scoreboards” keeping track of the living tributes and how many each of them have killed.

She nods. “Yes,” she says. “I think the closer it gets, the more excited I am. And so is Maximus, though I don’t think he cares much for the wedding itself. It’s hard to tell.”

I couldn’t handle an arranged marriage like that. Yes, technically Pitch’s and mine was arranged and not something decided upon based on love, but at least we arranged it ourselves. I’m sure that the victor who arranged Esther’s set-up wouldn’t have chosen a bad person for Esther, but it’s still weird to think of marrying someone random. Isn’t that why Pitch and I decided to get married: because we wanted the choice?

 _She’s doing it for protection. So she doesn’t have to go through what you and Pitch are going through,_ I remind myself. _That alone is reason enough to marry a stranger._

“You’re happy with him?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m comfortable around him, and I’m sure one day I’ll love him. He’s very nice, too, so please don’t worry about me.”

“I just wanted to make sure that he’s not a total creep,” I tell her.

“Yes, I guess that was your first impression and you haven’t gotten a chance to actually meet him,” she says. “But I promise that he’s not a creep. And I’m happy enough. I know that the decision I made means that I might not be completely happy right in the present, but it’ll bring happiness further down the road.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. If he’s doing _anything_ to make her upset right now. . . .

She answers with a shrug.

We pass by shops as we walk down the street; I take little notice of any of them. They’re just another reminder of the disgusting lifestyle of Capitol citizens that I cannot escape. So instead I just follow Esther’s lead and keep my attention on the path in front of us. I’m not sure exactly where we’re going, but I imagine that Esther is headed towards a bus stop since she doesn’t care too much for taxis.

“Juniper, if I tell you something, will you promise that you won’t be angry or think less of me?” Esther asks.

I glance at her. She studies me briefly before her eyes go back to the street to make sure that we’re not going to walk into a tree or fire hydrant or promotional sign. But in that look was an expression I don’t think I quite understood.

“There’s no way I can guarantee I won’t be angry,” I tell her honestly. “Unfortunately. But I’ll do my best.”

Esther smiles, but it isn’t one of happiness. The sheer joy of trying on her wedding dress vanished and is replaced by something akin to melancholy.

“I like you, Juniper,” she says.

I furrow my brow. “I like you, too?” I say, the confusion prominent in my words. Does she just need some sort of reassurance from me that I am her friend?

“No, I mean. I am attracted to you,” she clarifies.

Well okay . . . I keep my pace even as I try to understand what the hell she just said. I’m still not even sure I process it before I say, “You . . . like girls?”

“Sometimes,” she responds.

This conversation just got very awkward. I clear my throat and focus on not tripping over a ramp that leads up to a hat shop. I can’t share the same appreciation for her, though I do like her as a friend. But what bothers me more than that (I don’t even know if her interest in me bothers me at all because where the hell did that come from?), is the fact that she is about to get married to some man she barely knows. Not that I’d ever reciprocate, but there’s something terribly sad knowing that not only does she not love him but that she has interest in someone else.

“I’m sorry, Juniper. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Her voice is little more than a whisper.

“No, no, it’s okay,” I assure her because I realize that she is on the verge of tears and I don’t want that to happen. I don’t actually know if it’s okay; there are too many things going on in my head right now, and I’m not sure if I can deal with more complications to my situation at this point. “Why are you marrying a guy? You could have married another girl if you wanted to.”

“This was easier, I guess,” she says. “And I think I like men more than women, I don’t know. I guess . . . I don’t really know what I’m doing, and I’m sure that I’ll be happy enough with Maximus regardless. He’s very kind and he treats me well.”

“That’s good,” I say because I have no idea how one really responds to this.

“I hope . . . I hope I didn’t ruin our friendship,” Esther whispers.

“No. As long as you are okay with the fact that I can’t return the sentiment,” I tell her. And that’s the truth. I don’t think my life could get any more complicated than it was three minutes ago, so this bit of news just sort of rolls off the pile I’ve had to deal with without making a difference to the overall load.

Esther nods. “Yes, I suspected as much,” she says. “But I didn’t want to live my life without at least _saying_ something.”

“Please don’t say it aloud anywhere. I don’t think I could handle more interviews than what I already have,” I tell her.

She laughs at this, a true, genuine laugh. “I would hate to put you through that,” she says. “I saw the one yesterday and . . . I’m really sorry you two had to deal with that. But anyway, thanks for listening to me. And humoring me.”

“You’re welcome,” I say for lack of better things.

“I see you and Pitch together, and I’m so happy for you,” she says. “One day I hope Maximus and I love each other like you do.”

“Esther, we—” but I don’t finish the statement because once again there is a small smile on Esther’s face and she appears to be lost in thought. She’s probably imagining herself and Maximus together with a pleasant future, and I can’t just go and shatter that by telling her that whatever Pitch and I have isn’t quite what one would consider to be madly in love, and our future together is probably going to be far from pleasant, if the past few days have shown us anything.

But then again, I don’t even know what Pitch and I have, so it’s not like I could explain it to Esther even if I wanted to.

Esther pauses when we come to a bus stop sign. “This is my stop,” she says unnecessarily.

“I don’t mind hanging out til your bus comes,” I tell her. She smiles at me.

The two of us wait in silence. I don’t know what to say to her. When I woke up today, I certainly did not expect my friend to reveal her interest in me—an interest that I genuinely can’t return. In some ways, it makes me feel bad, but I know that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because even if I _did_ like her, we’re both getting married to different people and that would only make things far more complicated. And though it concerns me that she thinks Pitch and I have an admirable relationship, it does make me wonder if maybe we do, at least from the outside looking in. Isn’t that how the Capitol wants to project us to everyone? To make it look like things are just dandy even as they torture us?

“Where are you going to live?” I ask her suddenly.

She sighs. “I will live here in the Capitol,” she says. “But Maximus is okay if I go back to District 8 to visit my family.”

So in trying to escape the Capitol, she will be imprisoned here. Her wonderful fiancé is _kind_ enough to let her return to her home and spend time with her family. . . . A dark thought enters my mind: what if he changes his stance on that once they’re married and she isn’t allowed to leave this cursed city?

“Esther, promise me something,” I say to her quietly. She nods, and I continue, “If there is ever any problem with you and Maximus, please tell me. I don’t know what I’ll do, but—I don’t want you getting trapped anywhere.”

“Thank you,” she says kindly. “I appreciate your concern. And I will keep it in mind.”

Our conversation falls silent again, but we only need to wait a brief time before the bus arrives. Esther thanks me for waiting with her, and she waves to me as she gets on the bus. I watch her bus hiss as the doors closed, and then it zips off down the street.


	44. Chapter 44

“How did dress shopping go?” Pitch asks.

I throw my purse down and flop into one of the chairs at the kitchen counter.

“Well, it’s done,” I say. “That’s pretty much the best of it.”

He grins. “That much fun, huh?”

I don’t know what he’s making, but it smells good. Several pots and pans sizzle and steam, and I think there’s something in the oven, too.

“Well, I learned that I have too much fat in my thighs and not enough in my stomach and my boobs are too small and my skin tone is too uneven for whatever they originally had planned,” I sigh. I rest my elbow on the counter and cup my chin in my palm as I watch Pitch stir a pan of sautéed vegetables.

“You’re fine; don’t listen to them,” he says as he sets down the spoon next to the stovetop. He turns to me and adds, “Don’t let them alter your body.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I think they were satisfied with whatever dress they decided on. Hey, what happened to going on a walk?”

“That can come later,” he says. “I figured it would do us both good to actually eat.”

Something about this causes an uneasy sensation within me, and it takes a few moments to realize that it’s actually _happiness_ that flutters inside. Pitch is starting to take care of himself again, and that means that he’s also concerned about me and my wellbeing. Not that he wasn’t before, but he’s actually _doing_ something about this.

“Don’t fatten me up too much or I won’t fit in my dress,” I joke.

He smiles. “Then I guess you’ll have a reason not to wear it,” he answers.

I push myself out of the chair and walk around to the stove to see what he’s cooking. Vegetables, rice, beef.

“I figured you wouldn’t want something too heavy,” he says.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say.

I should probably go take a shower after trying on so many dresses, but instead I hang out with Pitch as he finishes cooking. We make idle talk as he stirs various dishes and throws in seasoning and whatever else, and I start loading discarded plates and bowls and spoons into the dishwasher. When he finishes, he serves the food and we take it into the sitting room and plop down on the couch without turning on the television.

“What’s in the oven?” I ask.

“Dessert,” he answers simply.

“Fancy,” I reply. But we start eating and words disappear. It’s decent enough. Simple. Nothing like the dishes I’ve had in the Capitol. It reminds me of home, in a way; I suppose because everything is plain with just enough taste to make it delicious. None of the weird sauces or garnish of the Capitol. None of the pretentiousness. I manage to eat almost everything that Pitch has put on my plate.

When we finish, we set our dishes on the coffee table and curl up together until the timer goes off and Pitch has to untangle himself from me and head off to the kitchen. Moments later, there’s a delicious smell filling the apartment.

“Is that cake?” I ask him.

“Brownies,” he replies. “Just plain brownies. I hope that’s okay.”

I stand up and wander into the kitchen where he’s just closing the oven door and turning it off. A dish of brownies sits on a raised rack on the counter. Pitch must see me eying them eagerly because he leads me away and says that they have to cool before we eat them. So we return to the couch and spend the next half an hour lying there together until Pitch’s stomach rumbles.

“I think the brownies are calling you,” I tell him.

“You are probably right,” he answers.

We head back into the kitchen.

“Esther was at the dress store, too,” I tell Pitch as he rifles around through drawers looking for a knife. He doesn’t find it, but he sets out two forks on the counter next to the brownies.

“Looking for a dress?” he asks.

“Yeah, I guess they decided to kill two birds with one stone,” I say to him.

“Or they thought that she would help keep you in line,” he tells me, opening another drawer. He starts sorting through it. I don’t know how I could not have a knife somewhere convenient—I don’t have much in this house at all, and I certainly don’t have extraneous utensils that would make finding what he needs a challenge.

I pick up one of the forks and start poking at the brownies. Yeah, Esther might’ve been there to keep me from getting crazy and give me something to focus on other than how much I didn’t want to be shoved into another ugly dress and be told that it’s ugly because of me and not because of the mass quantities of mismatched fabric.

“She looked very nice,” I say. “I think she might have liked dress shopping.”

It goes without saying that it wasn’t a great experience for me. I chip off a crispy edge of the brownie and put it in my mouth. The delicious taste of chocolate coats my tongue. I don’t know what he put in here, but the brownies are damned good. Maybe it’s the fact that there isn’t much in here at all and it’s just plain brownies without weird flavors or alcohol or flecks of edible gold.

Pitch finally digs out a knife and places it on the counter.

“That’s good,” he says. “At least one of you did.”

I shrug. “I think I pretended well enough to not make them think I was miserable,” I say.

He turns back to the cupboards and opens them to look for plates. Meanwhile, I take another bite of the brownie, this time not caring to bother with the edge and instead sinking my fork closer to the middle where it’s still somewhat warm.

Pitch turns back around with the plates and stares at the brownie pan with a missing piece just a couple inches off center. He looks at me with irritation, but then comes over, picks up the other fork, and takes a bite.

“To hell with plates,” I say.

“I can’t disagree,” he says.

“Thanks for making dinner and dessert,” I tell him.

“You’re welcome,” he says. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

We eat nearly a quarter of the plate of brownies before either of us begin to slow down. I don’t know why I’m suddenly able to eat this much and I hope I won’t regret it later. I try to tell myself that Pitch is eating more than me, but it’s probably not true at all.

“Esther talked to me afterwards,” I mention when I have to take a brief break from eating.

“Is she okay?” he asks.

“I think so. But she just said . . .” I hesitate because part of me wonders if we even had that conversation or if I imagined it all. But I continue, “She said that she’s happy that she’s getting married to Maximus but she’s attracted to me.”

Pitch freezes and lowers his fork.

“That is . . . unexpected,” he comments.

“Entirely,” I say. “We’re remaining just friends.”

He takes his next bite of food and thinks about what I’ve said. “Do you return her feelings?” he finally asks.

“No,” I tell him.

He lets out a breath, and it occurs to me that maybe, for the briefest moments, he was wondering if perhaps I was more interested in other people—specifically women—than him. I regret mentioning anything about Esther; I didn’t even think that it would make Pitch uncomfortable, but of course it would. He has no clue where I stand on our relationship, so I could be just as easily interested in another person. That would make things very awkward if I’m engaged to him and he is interested in me but I have my sights on someone else. Or even that I might not be interested in men at all. There’s little I can say to reassure him that it’s not the case, so I just pick up my fork and start eating again.

And yet I find myself thinking about Esther, and how shitty her situation is. How her need to get married to protect herself outweighs her desires to express her affection for people. I wonder, though, if it’s really that different from Pitch and me.

When we finish as much as we can eat, I collect the plates from the coffee table and carry them into the kitchen to place in the dishwasher as Pitch wraps the remains of the brownies with cellophane.

“I should turn on the television for a few minutes and make sure that everything’s okay,” he says as he pushes the brownies away from the edge of the counter.

It’s been a nice-ish day. I don’t want it to be ruined by the Hunger Games. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with Pitch, I’ve enjoyed his meal, and I’ve enjoyed not having the television blaring information about who was killed or who is dying.

“Can we not?” I ask Pitch. “I know that we should, but . . .”

He turns to me and studies my expression carefully. “We have to. Even if our tributes aren’t alive, we’re still responsible for keeping up on things,” he says.

“We can check again in the morning,” I say. “Then we’ll know everything that happened today.”

Pitch pushes my hair off my cheek and doesn’t respond for a few moments as he tucks the hair behind my ear. I wonder if he has ever realized that he has a choice in these sorts of situations—that he has the ability to say that the Hunger Games can wait a few hours when he has no tribute to keep alive.

“Just for a couple minutes,” he says. “Then I’ll turn it off.”

I try to hide the disappointment, but I know that it’s written all over my face. So instead I brush past him and head to the sitting room where I snatch up the remote and turn the television on. He joins me on the couch, and we watch the commercials on mute until they start showing the arena. Then Pitch turns the volume up and we listen to Caligula and Janice talk about the remaining five tributes (which means no one has died since Wisteria) and how they’re fairing today.

There are five tributes left, and one of them is a non-Career. It would be quite easy to direct all the tributes together as they did in my Hunger Games in order to have a finale, but Auburn would just get in the way of the battle. It’s too lopsided with a non-Career there, especially one that hasn’t really shown any great interest in fighting, aside from waving her knife around at people she later wants to ally with. So I’m sure there is something up the gamemakers’ sleeves, but it’s not the finale quite yet.


	45. Chapter 45

It’s evening in the arena, as it is here. The District 1 tributes walk carefully across open, blackened land as they trek through the arena in the search for the final non-Career tribute. They don’t realize they’re walking the opposite direction and that the District 6 girl has gone back into the jungle. Bubbling lava fountains behind them illuminate their dark shapes, casting light onto their faces. Neither of them are nearly as jovial as they were earlier in the Hunger Games. It’s Day 11 and they are in the homestretch. Victory taunts them, and they just have to kill four people in order to be crowned the champion.

I wonder what their plan is. The remaining Careers are powerful, and I wonder if they will go head-to-head in battle with the District 4 tributes. I suppose that would make for an interesting final event when you’re not certain which of the four will win. That only reminds me of my own finale; there were four of us left, but it wasn’t expected to be even. Two non-Careers verse two Careers. No real alliances, just a free-for-all that happened to end up with two one-verse-one battles that converged into the true fight for victory.

Suddenly the lava fountains converge into a giant sheet of lava that is spewed out from one long vent, blocking their way.

“Do you think this is the end?” Europa asks as she watches the curtain rise higher and higher.

“And they might be routing us back to the other tributes?” Ardor adds.

“It seems a little early,” the girl says casually. She stands there with one hand on the mace that’s strapped to her side. The great wall of liquid fire doesn’t seem to bother her, but when it starts shooting volcanic debris at them, she quickly backs away and puts more distance between them.

“If this is the final battle, then I think this alliance is no longer needed,” Ardor says.

Europa turns to face him, irritation clearly displayed on her face. “What does that mean? You think you can take on District 4 by yourself?” she demands.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he says as he draws out a sword.

The girl rolls her eyes. “You think that we’ll be the ones left standing, and after a battle, you won’t be strong enough to fight me,” she says. “So if you fight me now. . . .”

“Wrong,” Ardor says. “I want to show them that I can take on all three of you. And I’ll do it.”

“Give me a break, Ardor,” says Europa. “You can barely use that sword as it is.”

The boy doesn’t seem to much like Europa’s statements, and he adjusts his grip on his weapon while staring her down. Such a foolish move he’s making by cutting his ties with this girl, but it must have something to do with Career mindset. He wants to not just win but to be the best, so he’s going alone from here in the hopes that he can kill everyone by himself. And it looks like his district partner is having none of it.

“You’re really serious about this?” she asks. “You’re going to fight me?”

“Are you too scared?” he taunts.

Europa laughs. “No, I just want to make sure that you know what you’re doing,” she says as her hand reaches for the mace and she unclasps it from the harness that fixes it to her body. She holds it easily and gives it a bit of a twirl while staring down her district partner.

Ardor lunges in and swipes with his sword, but Europa easily dodges it. He tries again, and she does the same. Even with that heavy weapon in her hand, she moves with grace. That weapon isn’t just something she picked up at the Cornucopia after a few weeks of practicing in her home district; it’s an extension of her arm, something that she is well equipped to handle.

She blocks the next couple of attacks, using the mace to deflect the blows. Then when Ardor draws his arm back to swing, Europa lunges in and slams the mace into his chest. He gasps and collapses to the ground, the sword clattering from his hand. His fingers clench like he’s trying to reach for it, but his ribs are visibly broken and his chest caved in. His mouth opens and closes like he’s saying something, but then Europa brings down the mace again, and there’s a sickening crunch of bones and brains as it connects with his head.

The cannon fires, and Europa pauses long enough to stare down at the boy’s corpse. She pulls a knife and satchel off him and tucks them away. Before leaving him entirely, she grabs his sword and throws it into the fiery sheet.

“Should have stayed with me, Ardor,” she mutters as she glances at him once more. Then she turns her back to him and walks away.

Caligula and Janice go nuts as the camera shows us the retreating form of the District 1 female illuminated by the sheets of lava spewing into the sky.

“She is going to be our victor, I bet you anything,” Janice says with excitement. “She is an absolute master at her weapon.”

“You know, Janice, we’ve seen tributes over the years who have taken on the challenge of heavy blunts, but whew! Europa just blows me away,” says Caligula.

 _At least Isolde will have a victorious tribute,_ I think to myself as they show a replay of Europa smashing Ardor’s head to bits.

“Well that was exciting,” Pitch manages to say.

I’m pretty sure that the relaxing evening we were having is officially ruined.

“Four left. Three to go,” I add. I stand up and head back to the kitchen, but I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m not hungry, and I’m not really that thirsty, either, but I also had to get away from the television and what I just witnessed. I grab a glass, fill it with water, and chug it down. Then I fill it up again and head back to the couch.

“You okay?” Pitch asks.

I hand him the water and flop down next to him.

He takes a sip then sets it on the table.

“Sorry, Juniper. I know you didn’t want to watch this, but we have to keep up-to-date,” he says.

“I know, I know,” I say grumpily. I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the screen which now displays Caligula and Janice in their studio. They exchange dialogue back and forth about how amazing that was and what strategies Europa will have to take in order to handle the District 4 pair.

“We’re talking about a _very_ powerful pair,” Caligula says to her. “Europa has a ten, but the District 4 tributes have a nine and ten.”

“You forget that Ardor had a ten, and yet Europa was able to easily take him down,” Janice tells him. “I’m not sure what we’re going to see, but it’s really going to be good.”

They show another clip of the District 1 boy getting offed, and I realize that I just don’t care anymore. I don’t care about him, I don’t care about the remaining tributes, I don’t care about the Hunger Games.

I stand up abruptly and tell Pitch that I’m going to take a shower. Then I spend way too long under the water just staring at the smooth tiles, and when I finally manage to pull myself away from the waters and throw on some clothes, I only make it as far as the bed before I collapse.

Pitch joins me after awhile, and we lay in the darkness lost in our own thoughts.


	46. Chapter 46

The tributes have been in the arena for twelve days now, and although I hope that today will be the last, I know that I can’t get my hopes up.

I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. I don’t have the energy to move out of bed, nor do I want to wake up Pitch who still sleeps beside me. I roll over onto my side so that I face him. Despite how weird it sounds, I like watching him in the morning when he still sleeps and I’m too tired to get out of bed. . . . There’s something serene in his expression that I don’t get to see when he’s awake. Even in the small hours of the night, he’s fitful and struggles with the nightmares that plague him, but when the silence of the morning settles over us, he changes and his expression softens.

Finally Pitch starts stirring, and I slip away from him to begin the day.

“Everything okay?” he asks groggily.

“Yeah, I’ll just go get something started for breakfast,” I tell him.

He mutters something to himself and then pushes himself upright. Running a hand through his hair, he focuses his bleary eyes on me.

“I’ll join you in a couple minutes,” he says.

I nod and head out of the room, pausing at the thermostat to make the house a little warmer. I figure that if Pitch managed to make dinner last night, I should at least attempt to make breakfast. The shower turns on and I know that Pitch’ll be in the kitchen within a few minutes, so I work quickly and manage to scrape together pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Simple enough that I can’t mess it up too much. Pitch emerges when I’m finishing up the last couple pancakes, and he lingers about the kitchen until it’s finished.

“I’m going to go check on Elm,” he tells me as I scoop eggs onto our plates. He reaches over and grabs the plate of pancakes, tossing a couple onto each plate next to the eggs. “I’m sorry that I didn’t let you go to visit him the other day.”

We must always assume that our apartments here in the Capitol are bugged. There are many things we can talk about freely because the Capitol already knows how much we detest them and how much they make us suffer, but some things, like saying that I’d be actively assisting a mentor in his duties, must remain quiet. We must pick and choose our words carefully.

I nod. “Things might have been different,” I say. Wisteria might be alive. She might still have a chance.

“I know, Juniper,” he says. “But it would have been dangerous for you.”

“How is my life more important than hers?” I ask. I slap the bacon down on the plate with a little too much force.

“You’re not a tribute.” His voice is calm, but careful. “You have gone through your trials, and you are alive. Things are different in the arena—you know that.”

“So I _am_ more important than she is,” I say with disgust. “Tributes are just expendable to us, too?”

“That’s not correct,” he says. He pauses and tries to gather his words together while I stare him down and wait for something at least partially human to come from his mouth. “We cannot control what happens in the arena. We can help them as best as we can, but we can really only help our own actions and what happens with us out here.”

“But we _can_ help them, even if they’re in the arena,” I insist. “That’s what sponsorship is for.”

“Only to a certain degree,” he says. “Elm is responsible for getting his tribute sponsors, not you, not me. That is outside of your abilities.”

I grab one of the plates and shove it at him. He grasps it before the food can spill to the ground, and then shoots me a look.

“You can’t take on the responsibilities of other mentors,” he tells me as she sets the plate back on the counter. I try to walk by him, but he puts a hand on my waist. I pause and glare at him. “It will destroy you.”

“And doing nothing won’t?” I challenge. “Just sitting back and watching somebody die knowing that something could be done to help her isn’t going to destroy me?” I catch myself before I can go any further.

“There are rules, and we need to follow them,” he says, holding my stare.

Rules to keep us from helping others. Rules to keep us separate. Rules to make things more challenging to the people in the arena. And rules to make mentoring more soul-crushing. None of these rules work in the favor of mentors or tributes. They only exist to curry favor with the general public so that they will keep paying money into the system.

And, of course, these rules are in place to keep us victors in line.

I nod. “Okay,” I say quietly.

“Okay,” Pitch repeats. He releases his hand from my waist and picks up his plate.

We head to the sitting room and lower ourselves onto the couch. When Pitch turns on the television, I don’t protest. We can’t avoid it, after all; this is just another part of our lives.

When Pitch goes to check on Elm, I head out to the Training Center because I guess I also want to check up on Isolde, too. I find her in the mentor room, half-asleep in front of her computer. I sit down in Cronus’ spot and she looks over at me.

“Hey, Juniper,” she says wearily. “How’s it going?”

“Fine, but you look pretty damned tired. Everything okay?” I ask.

“Oh, totally. Europa is doing very well in the arena right now. It’s just that—” she pauses to look around at the other mentors who pretend like they’re not interested in our conversation when her eyes fall upon them “—She’s getting so many donations that I keep getting woken up whenever I tried to sleep. Not that I’m complaining, though.”

Well that’s one problem I never thought existed.

“Everyone thinks she’s going to win, then?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah, and for a good reason,” she answers. “She took out Ardor so easily—made it look like it wasn’t even a problem at all. Everybody wants to say that they supported her once all is said and done.”

“How is she going to take on two other Careers?”

Isolde waves her hand. “That I can’t really say, not here at least,” she says.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry,” I say.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “And at any rate, I’m not sure what I want to buy her from the store. I already sent her a pretty big meal last night, but there’s enough for more.”

“Hey, Isolde, if your tribute has too much money, you can always shove it up your ass,” Tethys suggests.

Isolde turns and bats her lashes sweetly at her before flipping her off. Then she turns right back to me. “So anyway, I guess you can say things are going a-okay in the mentor room,” she tells me.

Savera snorts from the other end of the row of computers. Her own tribute, Auburn, isn’t doing too hot, and she doesn’t have the sort of money that Isolde has collected for Europa in order to send in a healing ointment or other medicine. I’m thinking that Isolde had better keep her thoughts to herself before she gets shanked by angry mentors who don’t want to see their tributes die because Isolde’s tribute is so damned powerful.

“I’m due for a break, so let’s take a walk,” Isolde says as she stands up and pushes herself away from her computer station. The two of us head out of the mentoring room and down the hallway.

Isolde asks me about the wedding planning, and how things have been going. I admit that I have no desire to do much in the ways of preparing for this event, and that both Esther and I had to choose dresses yesterday.

“See, if you had let me be your wedding planner, then I could have chosen the dress for you,” she teases.

“At this point, I wish I had taken you up on it,” I mutter.

She laughs and leads me through the door into the garden. Although I have been here several times, I still shiver when I stare at the thick foliage and fresh lawns.

“I’m tired, Juniper,” Isolde says as we plunge into the greenery. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had a tribute make it this far.”

“Um, Isolde, your tribute made it to the finale two years ago,” I say. I know because I was there, and I killed her.

“So you are right,” she agrees wearily.

But then I wonder. . . . Isolde is mentor this year, she was last year, and she was mentor the year before. There are tons of mentors from District 1, and yet this is at least the third year she’s mentoring. How the hell does that work out? Sure, she says that District 7 is the same way, but that’s not true; we have far fewer victors to choose from.

“Maybe you can take next year off?” I suggest.

“Maybe,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

“Why are you mentoring year after year?” I ask her. “How many years has this been?”

“Oh, it’s been a few,” she answers vaguely. “You know how it goes.”

“Really, Isolde?” I ask. “No, I don’t.”

“Did you just come here to harass me?” she asks.

I stop short before I can comment on that because I see how exhausted she is. She doesn’t need me harping on her like this right now, so I let the words fall away before they can be pushed out of my mouth. The two of us meander through the gardens until it’s time for her to head back to the mentoring room. She thanks me for stopping by, and I tell her to call me if she ever gets bored.


	47. Chapter 47

When I return to the apartment, I find Elm sitting at the kitchen counter. I stare at him in confusion for a few moments wondering if I am so weary that I accidentally went to the wrong apartment. But no, this is my place, this is my kitchen, and that’s my statuette of a potato Isolde got me as a housewarming gift last year.

Elm looks at me with irritation. He is barely able to hold himself upright, and he turns back to the counter and stares at it intently, his head in his hands.

Pitch appears from the bedroom before I have a chance to even find words to ask Elm why he’s here.

“He’ll be with us for a bit,” Pitch explains. “I hope that’s okay—I know I should have asked you first.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” I tell him. Elm doesn’t appear to have heard our conversation even though we are standing right here. But I see Pitch eyeing me carefully, so I toss my purse aside and follow him back into the bedroom and into the bathroom where he closes the door quietly in the hopes that Elm doesn’t pick up the fact that we’re about to talk privately about him.

“He’s in bad shape,” Pitch says. “I hope . . . he’ll just be able to get through the end of the Hunger Games and the Presentation of the Victor. Then he can go back to District 7.”

“And end up in rehab that he says is pointless,” I add.

“Well, I’m also hoping that maybe it’ll be a little more effective this time around,” he says. “I plan to get Dr. Castillo on board. She might be able to provide better treatment for him. I’ll call her after we get things situated.”

Dr. Castillo bandaged up my hands once and took care of me on another occasion after Pitch threw me into a wall last year. I have no reason to dislike her; she’s a pleasant enough person to be treated by, and she makes house calls to the Training Center. I don’t know who she is, exactly, but I do know that Pitch trusts her entirely; she treated him when he was hospitalized following his second suicide attempt, and she apparently has the ability to move between the Capitol and the districts.

“Alright, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” I ask. “I have no idea what to do with a drunk alcoholic.”

“We have to make sure that he still has enough alcohol to get by,” Pitch says.

“Wait, why?” I ask. “Isn’t that the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing?”

Pitch leans back against the bathroom counter and folds his arms over his chest. “He’s addicted, so he has to be weaned off the alcohol,” he explains. “In the meantime, he needs to have alcohol to avoid withdrawals, which could make him very sick—or kill him.”

“This sounds like it can only end poorly,” I mutter. But I draw in a deep breath and say, “He can have one of the spare bedrooms. But if he starts vomiting anywhere, he has to clean it up.”

Pitch gives me a wry smile at that. “I don’t know how well he holds his alcohol,” he says. “Maybe let’s give him the room without carpet.”

“And then we just let him have as much alcohol as he wants?” I say. “That sounds pretty dangerous. What if he drinks too much?”

“He _says_ that he only has between fifteen and twenty drinks a day,” Pitch says. “So I was thinking of making sure he doesn’t get more than—”

“I’m sorry, but _what_?” I demand. “He ‘only’ has fifteen or twenty a day?!”

Pitch shrugs. “He’s an alcoholic. Keeps drinking more and more over time, I guess,” he says. “But I was thinking of not having more alcohol in the house than, say, the equivalent of twenty-four drinks.”

“Which means that we’re going to have to order mass quantities of alcohol every day,” I tell him. “Which also means that people are going to think that we _all_ have a problem.”

“I don’t know what the other option would be,” he admits. “We can get a variety and say that we’re sampling things for the wedding.”

“Oh, that’s not going to go over well at all,” I state. “I’d rather just say we’re alcoholics ourselves than open up more issues with the wedding.”

He smiles, then reaches out for me. I let him pull me against him, and he puts his arms around me. “If the wedding is bothering you too much, we can call it off,” he says. I don’t think he’s serious about it, but I exhale in annoyance anyhow.

“No, we’ve come too damned far to back out of this,” I tell him.

“Juniper, it makes me so happy to know that it’s your love for me and not your overwhelming anger at the system that is propelling this engagement forward,” he teases.

“Damn right,” I answer. I think he might kiss me again, but the moment lasts only briefly before I pull away and say, “We just left the alcoholic in the kitchen where I have vodka and whisky for cooking.”

“Good point,” he says. We reluctantly release each other, and I head out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and into the hallway. To my relief, Elm sits exactly where we left him.

“You get the bedroom at the end of the hallway, on the left,” I tell him as I sit down in the chair next to him. I try to ignore putrid smells of alcohol and body odor now that I’m this close. “But if you’re going to puke, you need to puke in the toilet, and then clean it afterwards.”

Elm turns towards me enough to stare at me with his reddened eyes. It’s a scathing sort of look laden with disgust, and I am surprised to find that someone as quiet and calm as Elm has the ability to express that sort of emotion. I’ve known him for two years, and never before has he done anything that made me think that he would ever have the desire to stare someone down like that.

“What have you had to drink today?” I ask.

“Are you going to judge me?” he snaps.

I don’t respond for a second. No, this is definitely not the Elm I know. I shake my head. “No, I’m just curious,” I say.

He puts his head in his hands and closes his eyes. “Not enough, I’ll tell you that,” he says. “Do you have anything here, or has Pitch sworn you off alcohol after lecturing you about this great evil?”

I look up at Pitch who is watching us from the hall. After watching our interaction, he comes around to the other side of the counter where he can face Elm.

“Listen to me, Elm, and listen well,” he says. “Do not give Juniper shit—she is kind enough to have you here because she, like me, is concerned about you. We are going to give you a reasonable amount of alcohol while you’re here so that you don’t get sick, but as soon as we get back to District 7, we’re going to figure out how to proceed with your rehab.”

“Fuck,” Elm mutters. “I think I’ll just go back to my own apartment.”

Pitch looks at him with irritation. “You were so drunk, you couldn’t even feed yourself,” he tells him. “God only know when the last time you bathed was, so let’s get to the bathroom, and then we’ll talk about getting you a drink.”

For a moment, I don’t think that Elm is going to comply, but he finally heaves himself out of the chair. Pitch guides him away from the kitchen counter and into the hallway, and the two of them vanish deeper into the apartment leaving me alone and overwhelmed in the kitchen. With all the other shit we’re dealing with, how the hell are we going to handle something like this?

I busy myself with making us lunch which is just sandwiches because I’m not bothering with actually making anything fancy. When I finish, I set them aside and pick up a book lying around. One of the ones Quintus wanted me to read. I’m about halfway through and it’s a wild ride; I can’t say I hate it, which in some ways is disappointing.

Pitch and Elm reemerge. Elm takes the kitchen chair again and I slide a sandwich in front of him. He stares down at the plate; I know it’s not what he really wants, but he can’t just live on alcohol. Or maybe he can—I guess it depends on the type of alcohol.

“Eat,” Pitch says to him. “I’ll be right back.”

Not wanting to leave Elm alone, I climb into a chair and slowly eat my lunch while reading. Out of the corner of my eye, I sneak glances at the other victor as he picks at his sandwich. No, this isn’t want he wants at all, but he probably hasn’t had much real food in quite some time. Eventually he begins to eat, though he only gets a few bites in before he gives up. He clear his throat, picks at the sandwich a bit, and then turns to me.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says. The aggression has left his words. All that remains is a quiet emptiness.

I lower my book and set it down on the counter next to my own half-eaten sandwich.

“I know,” I say.

“I’m inconveniencing you, and I’ve already screwed up enough the past few days,” he continues. “I don’t want to add more to the list of people I’ve fucked over.”

To this, I don’t respond. I look him over, and despite the fact that the shower cleaned him up, he still looks like a mess. His red-rimmed eyes darkened by lack of sleep flit around anxiously. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, which only contributes to his haggard appearance. He knows that he has messed up quite badly, and what can he do about that now except drink and try to forget?

“You mean Wisteria?” I ask.

He holds my gaze steadily for several seconds. Yes, he means Wisteria. He knows that he didn’t give her the chance she deserved because he was too damned drunk to perform his mentor duties. My stomach lurches as I remember that I could have helped him. But I didn’t. And now he knows that he signed her death sentence. If I had been able to help. . . .

But I also know that Pitch is right, which I hate even more than the fact that I did nothing to help Wisteria.

Pitch reemerges from the hallway. I turn my attention away from Elm and towards him as he circles the counter.

“This is yours,” I say as I push the plate towards him.

He nods at me briefly but his attention returns to Elm.

“I’ve called Dr. Castillo,” he says carefully. “I’m waiting for a call back.”

“That’s the one who fixed you up after you tried to off yourself?” Elm asks. He’s so casual about this, and I glance towards Pitch to see if the words are too casual. But Pitch doesn’t flinch at his question and instead keeps his full attention on Elm.

“Yes, that’s the one,” he replies.

Elm shakes his head and stares at his plate. “Maybe I don’t mind being drunk all the time,” he mutters. “Ever thought of that?”

“Yes, and I’d say that you’re saying that because you’re addicted,” Pitch says dryly. Then he turns to me and asks, “Juniper, do you have anything to drink for Elm?”

“Just what I have for cooking,” I tell him. That probably means that it’s okay for me to get the small stash of alcohol that I haven’t touched because I barely cook. I leave my place at the counter and begin to hunt through the cupboards and drawers before I pull out a bottle of vodka. Something within me screams that this is just crazy wrong, but I still find myself handing the bottle to Pitch anyhow.

A phone rings suddenly, and I start patting my pockets before I realize that my phone is in my purse that I threw near the door. Before I have a chance to get it, Pitch has his own phone in his hand and presses a button.

 _Just Dr. Castillo, thank heavens,_ I think. Any sort of guidance will be appreciated right now. Elm eyes the vodka in Pitch’s hand.

But when the voice on the other end speaks, I know it’s not Dr. Castillo. I’m not sure who it is—it’s one I’ve never heard before—but all confusion for why it’s not the doctor vanishes when she says, _“Pitch? Does your fiancée know about Caecilia?”_


	48. Chapter 48

Pitch sets the bottle of vodka down on the counter and turns the phone off speaker as Elm and I watch him with curiosity. He leans back against the fridge and presses the phone against his ear.

“Faustina?” he asks carefully. “Why are you calling?”

I don’t hear the reply—it’s too muffled to make out more than her voice—but Pitch rubs his forehead and pinches the bridge of his nose as he listens to her talk. I strain to hear what she’s saying, and I almost miss Elm reaching for the bottle of vodka and drawing it closer to himself, but I don’t care enough to say anything about it. My attention returns to Pitch immediately, and I watch his pained expression as he listens to this woman talk.

“Why would you even do that?” he finally asks. The voice on the other end becomes more impassioned, as though he asked completely the wrong thing, and now she’s loud enough that I can catch bits and pieces of what she’s saying: _your daughter . . . it’s her right . . . I don’t care . . . terrible father . . . owe it to her. . . ._

My chest tightens as I pick up more and more of what she’s saying. Even though I don’t hear it all, it’s enough to know that this must be one of the people who forced Pitch to father her children, and now she’s blaming him for something. Probably “neglecting” them. I grab a dishtowel off the counter and clutch it in my hands to try to calm myself down.

“Yes . . . fine . . . no, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Pitch manages to get in while the woman chews him out. Finally he says, “What about Caecilia? Does she know what’s going on?”

Pitch begins pacing now, and he moves out of the kitchen, then back in, then out again. It makes it more difficult to hear what the woman is saying, but eventually Pitch says firmly, “She has the right to not have her personal life spilled out before the entire Capitol.”

The woman says something, and then Pitch snaps, “For fuck’s sake, she _eleven_. She doesn’t need this sort of drama in her life! Get over yourself, Faustina, and let her be a child.”

The screams on the other end of the phone make Pitch flinch: _“If you hadn’t . . . she deserves to know who her father is . . . Her life is terrible not knowing the truth . . . You’re such a selfish pig to deny your daughter the chance to know her father. . . .!”_

I glance at Elm who has finished a good quarter of the bottle. When he sees me staring, he holds it out to me and says, “I think you might need some.”

I shake my head, but can’t manage to say anything else. Pitch has vanished into the sitting room where I can’t hear the woman’s side of things, but then I hear Pitch say, “Absolutely not. I’m hanging up now.” And true to his word, the phone clicks off, and the apartment plunges into an uneasy silence.

Pitch disappears into the hallway and to the bedroom, leaving Elm and me wondering what the hell is going on. Or, perhaps, Elm doesn’t care. He has his alcohol now and appears to be somewhat happy with this turn of events that allowed him to have a bottle in his hand once more. I swallow hard and wander into the sitting room. I am about to flop on the couch when I see that the phone still sits here on the coffee table. I pick it up in my hand and stare at the blank screen.

 _How many children does he really have?_ I wonder. _And if these women were all crazy enough to trick him or force him to get them pregnant, how well is this all going to go over if they start coming out of the woodwork?_

The phone rings again, and I drop it onto the floor.

Gingerly I pick it back up and hold it as though it might bite me. If this is Dr. Castillo, Pitch needs to answer it—but if it’s not, then it could be another terrible, soul-destroying conversation with somebody he never wants to speak to again. I can’t go give this to him knowing that there’s a damned good chance that this “Faustina” lady is on the other end. But if it’s Dr. Castillo and he doesn’t answer it, then that could affect Elm’s current state.

The number on the screen is not one I recognize. I had half-hoped that everything would be programmed to display who was calling, like my phone is when other victors message me.

I take a deep breath and press the button to accept the call.

“Hello?” I ask quietly. I hold the phone against my ear and brace myself for screaming people.

But it’s not. It’s the same woman, but she’s calmer now: “You must be Juniper,” she says. Her voice is cold and I can’t figure out if she’s angry or that’s just how she sounds.

“This is she,” I reply carefully.

“Good,” she says. “I wanted to talk with you.”

“Okay,” I tell her.

“You sounded like you weren’t aware of Pitch’s previous _relationships_ during your interview, and the fact that he has children with other women,” the woman says. “I think it’s quite selfish of him to withhold that information from you, just, of course, as it is selfish of him to deny his own child and ignore her for years. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, you need to know about this so you have the option to call off your engagement if necessary.”

“So you called him up and screamed at him?” I ask with skepticism.

“He can be . . . difficult to talk with,” she answers with a long sigh. “I hope that you will be able to get through to him better than I could. Please, if you can, talk some sense into him. He hasn’t seen his daughter since she was born, and she’s eleven years old now. It’s really hurt her to grow up without a father.”

I swallow back the anger that surges through me. What an absolute psychopath this woman is. She uses both Pitch and their child in order to do, what? I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that I hate her, and she is the epitome of the Capitol’s bullshit. This is the reason that we in the districts loathe the people of the Capitol. Everyone else is just a tool for them to use to make their own lives more entertaining.

“Oh, hang on,” I say. “I think I left something on the stove. I have to go before the fire alarm goes off _again_.” I click the “call end” button before she has a chance to respond.

I sigh and set the phone down, and it’s only then that I see movement out of the corner of my eye. Pitch stands near the hallway with his arms over his chest, watching me, and I wonder how long he was there and how much of that conversation he overheard.

“She’s nuts,” I say to him. But it does little to lighten the heaviness that darkens his expression. “Pitch. . . .”

He walks over to me and sits down on the couch. I reach out and take his hand. He clasps onto it, and I feel him trembling.

“What does she want from you?” I ask.

He leans back into the couch and rests his head on the backrest. Staring up at the ceiling, he assembles his thoughts.

“She wants me to be a proper father to Caecilia,” he says. “She says that I have neglected her, and she’s grown up fatherless and it’s put a massive strain on her development.”

“You know she’s just full of shit, right?” I ask. “Plenty of kids grow up in single-parent households.”

Pitch tilts his head enough to look at me. “Sure,” he says. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

I release Pitch’s hand and move closer to him. He leans into me and I hold him for several minutes, neither of us saying anything. This is a result of the interview, of course. She had seen it and decided that my naivety was too much for her and she had to tell me. In some ways, I suppose that’s pretty noble. If this were a normal relationship, I might be really upset to find out that somebody was keeping previous children secret from me, but this isn’t normal; we’re victors and we don’t get normal anymore, as I know so well. Abandoning a kid is a terrible thing for a parent to do, but Pitch’s situation deviates from the typical abandonment so greatly that comparing one to the other is nearly impossible. I tighten my hold on Pitch to try to get him to stop shivering.

At this point, Elm wanders into the sitting room, bottle in hand, and lowers himself into an armchair. He watches us for a moment or two before he says, “You know, it might be worthwhile to meet this kid.”

“Why?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “They’re going to make a big deal out of this if you don’t do what she says, so you might as well go along with it,” he answers.

Pitch shakes his head. “But I don’t want Caecilia to have her life projected on every television in Panem,” he protests.

“It’s already going to happen,” Elm points out. “You know that they’re going to drag this out in the open. Better to do it in a way that’s a little less like a soap opera and more like a family reunion.”

Elm has a point. Regardless of how we react, people will know about this. Once again, we are left with the decision how to best handle the fact that we’re about to get screwed over by the circumstances. We can either let others control how it unfolds, or we can try to do this on our own terms in the hopes that maybe it will be less painful.

Pitch rubs his eyes and doesn’t respond right away. It’s not just his fate or mine, but the fate of some kid that he barely knows. Our lives will get torn open one way or another, and our privacy will be destroyed. But the girl shouldn’t have to suffer the same fate. However he proceeds with this will determine whether this kid’s life is only moderately disrupted or completely destroyed. . . . But he lacks the information to know which decision he makes will lead to what path. He could do what Elm says hoping that it will soften the impact, and it all may end up in pain and chaos anyhow.

Elm takes a swig of his vodka and winces as it goes down. I don’t think this is his alcohol of choice, but right now it’s the best he’s going to get, especially with Pitch distracted with his current situation.

“There are others,” Pitch says, his voice straining. “Am I just supposed to meet them all if their mothers insist? I don’t even know how many there are. . . . This is a nightmare.”

I wonder how much of the details Elm knows about, and if he thinks that Pitch is absolutely heartless for not wanting to meet up with his children. Pitch keeps his head down and stares at the rug.

Regardless of what choice Pitch makes, this is going to reflect absolutely terribly on him. Maybe on me, too, but I don’t care. His “services” to the Capitol don’t appear to be very well known, if Quintus is to be believed. Which means that once it comes out that he has this many children, people are going to think poorly of him and wonder what sort of person he is that he impregnates women and leaves them to raise his children alone. Then it strikes me that it may reflect _very poorly_ on our marriage, and if people thought he was taking advantage of me before, then they’re really going to think that he is once this news gets out.

“Can you contact the other mothers?” Elm asks finally.

“Why?” Pitch asks. Bitterness and anger touch that one word.

“Because I think it’s better that _you_ initiate contact with them rather than them going to the news stations and complaining about what a sleaze you are,” he says as he leans back in his chair. He tilts the bottle to his lips again, but I’ve noticed that after the initial few minutes of getting his hands on the bottle, he’s slowed down significantly. Whatever he was drinking before—beer, I assume—probably was not as potent as this vodka.

“Like he’s getting married and wants to find all his children just for fun?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “He’ll have to have a good reason for reaching out to them because that’ll definitely come up in interviews.”

Elm thinks about it for a few moments. He taps the bottle against his chin. “I’ll need to think about that,” he says.

Pitch finally says, “Let me go call Faustina back.” He takes the phone out of my hand, kisses me on the forehead, and heads out of the room and to the hallway.

Elm looks at me and tilts his head. “Well, I have to say that being here is more interesting than getting drunk by myself in own apartment,” he says.

“Thanks, Elm,” I say flatly. “I’m glad we could provide you entertainment.”

“Don’t forget that I’m helping,” he says. “I might be a drunk, but I do know that Pitch is a good person and shouldn’t be in this position. He’s tried to take care of me for years, so about time I returned the favor.”


	49. Chapter 49

I’m beginning to understand that every time I visit the Capitol, it will be a new adventure. And by “adventure” I don’t mean the sort of noble quest whose sacrifice will be worth the end result, like what I’m reading about in my current novel. No, it’s more like a series of terrible things, one falling right after another, and none of them expected in any way.

An hour after Pitch makes the phone call, the three of us wait in the sitting room with the television on mute as we watch the remaining tributes struggle through the arena. At this point, I don’t care which tribute wins, and I don’t care how they manage to pull it off—I just want it all to be done so that we can return to District 7 and Pitch and I can get married without further interference. Instead we’re waiting for Faustina and Caecilia to show up so that our lives can become even more difficult than they were a couple hours ago.

“I’ll just duck into my room when they come, but call me if you need a hand,” Elm assures Pitch. Pitch nods absently like he wants to acknowledge that Elm said something but wasn’t listening well enough to actually hear what he said. Elm looks at me and I shrug.

Pitch and I cleaned up a bit, both ourselves and the apartment, to make things appear a little more presentable. I, like Elm, had offered to give Pitch space, but he insisted I stay with him and that I wouldn’t be intruding. Now he holds my hand so tightly that I don’t think I could leave even if I wanted to. He rubs his free hand on his leg as he waits for the doorbell to ring. Maybe it would have been less nerve-wracking if we had gone somewhere else to meet as Faustina had wanted, but Pitch insisted that they meet us here where we’d be away from the prying eyes of strangers. Caecilia, he said, deserves at least a bit of privacy on this matter before all hell breaks loose.

When the doorbell rings, Elm and his bottle of vodka disappear down the hallway. I stand up but hang back as Pitch moves towards the door.

He opens the door, and there stands a beautiful woman who is maybe thirty or thirty-five. Her makeup, while as outlandish as the next person’s, has been applied to complement her features, not obscure them as so many people do. She smiles at Pitch.

“It’s been awhile,” she says to him as though they are old friends. I bristle at her familiarity with him knowing the circumstances through which they had previously been acquainted. She doesn’t care, of course, and when Pitch invites her inside, she steps in without hesitation.

A pre-teen girl follows closely behind her as though she’s terrified that she will get separated from her mother. Her wide eyes lock into Pitch and she can’t take her attention off him, not even when her mother turns and smiles at me. She’s a pretty girl with her mother’s light brown skin and Pitch’s grey eyes. Her brown hair has been braided and pinned up so that not a single strand falls out of place. Like her mom, her makeup has been done in a way that doesn’t look overly garish.

“Pitch, this is Caecilia,” the woman says as she draws the girl around her so that she can’t hide in her shadow.

Pitch smiles at the girl—a genuine smile, but one that contains not just happiness at seeing his daughter but a lingering sadness that I can’t really understand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Caecilia,” he says to her.

“Pleasure,” she responds quietly.

“Caecilia, Faustina, this is Juniper,” he introduces us. He looks steadily at me.

“Hey,” I say as nicely as I can. I stand there for a second before I remember that maybe I should try to pretend to have manners like my parents taught me long ago. The Capitol might have stripped some of the basic human decency from me, but there must be some remaining. So I say, “Would you guys like anything to drink?”

“Water would be nice,” Faustina says. I glance at Caecilia, but she’s too taken with Pitch that I might as well be on a different planet, so I head to the kitchen and grab a few glasses which I fill up with water. Pitch leads them into the sitting room, and mother and daughter sit down on the couch while Pitch takes an armchair. I pass out the waters before lowering myself into the other armchair.

Nobody knows what to say. Silence twists between us as we wait for somebody else to begin conversation. How does one bridge the gap of years and worlds with a few short sentences?

At last Faustina says, “It was nice of you to see us today, Pitch. I’m glad that you want to incorporate Caecilia in your life.”

Pitch clears his throat. “Yes. Um, of course,” he says. And then an awkward silence again.

“How long are you in the Capitol for?” Faustina asks.

“Until the Presentation of the Victor,” Pitch replies.

“And then you go back to District 7,” she says. “And then you two are getting married.”

“Yes,” he says, watching her carefully for her reaction. But Faustina doesn’t sound bitter or angry or possessive. It’s just a fact she stated.

“In which case you will leave Caecilia behind again, until next year,” she says. Again, another fact. But despite how reasonable she sounds, something sinister lurks beneath her words. _She’s waiting for Pitch to say something “wrong” and then she’ll freak out on him again._

Pitch must know it, too, because he says, “What is your suggestion, Faustina?”

“Caecilia would prefer to spend more time with you during the year,” she answers. “She would like to get to know her father better . . . and without the Hunger Games to distract you.”

“You would like me to come back during the year,” he says.

“It would only be appropriate,” she confirms. She sizes Pitch up and waits for his reaction.

Caecilia sits quietly next to her mother. Although she’s invested in this conversation, she’s still mesmerized by Pitch, and I can’t tell if she is as enthusiastic to have him be a part of her life as her mother is.

“What are you thinking?” he asks. He picks up the glass of water I left on the end table for him and takes a sip.

“Well, a few months every year shouldn’t be too much to ask,” the woman says.

Pitch chokes on the water. It takes him a moment to regain his composure, and he sets the glass back down on the end table.

Faustina’s face contorts in anger.

“That is a small price to pay for a man who _abandoned_ his daughter,” she snaps. Caecilia looks up at her mom and winces with the sharpness of her words.

“Faustina, I—” Pitch starts, but she cuts him down with a sharp glare.

“Your daughter missed having a father in her life for _eleven years_ ,” she spits. “Do you know how damaging that is on her young psyche?”

I don’t have children of my own, but even I know that screaming at your child’s other parent in front of the child is also very damaging to her psyche. The girl stares at the blank television now as though willing it to come on by itself so that she can have some sort of distraction from it all. But I know that the only thing that will be playing right now is the Hunger Games, and I can’t stomach violence on top of the drama unfolding in my apartment. So instead I say, “Caecilia, would you like to see my library?” The girl looks up at me, but it isn’t until her mother tells her to go that she stands up and follows when I lead her out of the room.

When I was here last year, I turned one of my spare rooms into the library to hold my books. This year I managed to pull them out of boxes and bags and get them set up on a few shelves. There’s not nearly enough to really call it a “library” right now, but I’m sure a few more trips to the bookstore and I’ll be close enough that it doesn’t matter. In addition to the shelves, I also have a table in here with two chairs, and a comfortable armchair under a reading lamp. It’s a pity that whenever I’m in this apartment, I’m too busy watching the Hunger Games to be able to appreciate this room.

 _If that woman gets her way, you may be in the Capitol a lot more than you want in the near future,_ I warn myself.

“It’s a small collection, but I keep expanding it every time I go to the bookstore,” I explain to her, but she is already at the shelves scanning through the books. I sit down in one of the chairs at the table and watch as she takes her time skimming the titles and occasionally pulling a book out to examine the summary on its flap.

In the distance, I can hear Pitch and Faustina trying to keep their voices down as they exchange words about how they’re going to handle this situation. Faustina’s voice rises higher and more frantically than Pitch’s calm, restrained voice. I consider closing the door so that Caecilia doesn’t have to listen, but I also want to be available if Pitch needs reinforcements. Minutes pass, and Caecilia chooses a book and brings it over to the table. She takes the chair opposite mine, and I catch a glimpse of the title before she flips the book open. It’s one of the children’s books I had been embarrassed to be caught with when Quintus found me in his bookstore and brought me to the VIP section. But now I’m relieved that I have something that interests her and might keep her distracted. I only wish that I had brought my own book, but I left it in the kitchen.

Suddenly music starts playing from the room next door, and both Caecilia and I look up and stare at the wall. It takes me a second to remember that Elm is here, and he probably decided that the ruckus was disturbing his drinking and thus barricaded himself away behind music. I roll my eyes. Caecilia watches me for a moment before going back to her book.

Minutes pass, and then Pitch appears in the doorway and motions for us to follow.

“Caecilia,” I say, and she starts when I break her out of the book. “Time to go.”

She stands up, closes the cover, and looks longingly at the book.

“You can have it,” I say.

“Thank you, but I should leave it here,” she says.

We follow Pitch back to the sitting room and resume our places. Pitch’s expression is strained, but Faustina looks irritated more than anything else. When her daughter is settled in beside her, she turns to the girl.

“Caecilia, your father is very excited to spend quality time with you,” she says to her. “He would like you to stay with him for the next few days. How does that sound?”

 _What the hell?_ I stare up at Pitch who is watching the girl carefully for her response.

The girl looks up at her mom with wide eyes. “That’s fine,” she says.

“I’ll have your suitcase sent here right away,” Faustina says. She really means business by dropping her kid off immediately with an almost complete stranger. But she doesn’t look bothered by this in the least, and though the girl looks confused and a little sad, she doesn’t seem weirded out by this turn of events.

Only then does Pitch look at me with a glance that tells me to keep my mouth shut. I comply, but probably only because I have no idea what the hell to even do in this situation. What sort of mother does this to her kid?

Faustina kisses Caecilia on her cheek and promises her that she’ll have a good time with her father and to mind him and keep out of the way of his important work. Caecilia only says that she will, and then Faustina stands up, gives another long look at her daughter, and turns to Pitch.

“Are we ready then,” she says.

There’s no room for argument or protesting. That has already failed. Pitch nods and says, “Yes, I’ll take care of her.”

“Good,” Faustina tells him. “I’ll send you her medical information and everything else you might need in case of emergency. Caecilia, call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” the girl promises.

I wonder how ready her mother would be to respond to a phone call if she’s so willing to ditch Caecilia here with a couple of strangers. But Faustina heads to the door without further comments. Pitch sees her out, and he closes the door behind her.

The three of us are left in another strange silence, though this one is wrought with confusion more than anything. I can’t ask Pitch questions in front of the girl, but I’m going to make him tell me everything that went on the first chance I get.

“Do you want anything to eat, Caecilia?” he asks.

“No thanks. I had lunch before I came,” she says.

Pitch nods and comes back into the sitting room. He opens his mouth to speak, but Caecilia cuts him off: “Mom is going on vacation and didn’t want to bring me along. You probably figured out that already, even if she didn’t tell you.”

“I’m sure that she didn’t mean it that way,” he tries to reassure her, but she looks completely unimpressed with his attempts.

“She had reservations for an end-of-the-Games party, and Grandma died last spring so she was going to be forced to bring me along if she couldn’t find someone to watch me,” the girl adds.

Pitch exhales and sits back in his chair. I stare at the girl completely blown away by what she just said—not necessarily the fact that it’s true (I believe it, and I have only spoken to her mother briefly) but that she is so blasé about the situation. She just got ditched with two random people—one of whom being a father she never knew existed—so that her mom could go gallivanting around town without her.

“I’m . . . sorry that she has done that to you.” Pitch treads carefully with this girl he barely knows. “But please make yourself at home here. We will get the spare bedroom set up for you right away.”

She nods and thanks him.

He stands up and hands her the television remote. “Juniper and I will go get your room set up. We’ll be right back, okay?” She nods again.

This apartment contains a master bedroom and four smaller bedrooms, all on the same hall and each with their own bathroom. The library and Elm’s room are on the left side of the hallway, and the master and one of the bedrooms are on the right with the final bedroom at the end of the hallway. In terms of apartments, this is one of the smaller ones. You can find places that have fewer rooms, but oftentimes the rooms themselves are much larger. I couldn’t stomach a place with great, cavernous spaces, so this was the best thing I could find in last year’s apartment hunt. The room Pitch has chosen for Caecilia is the one next to the master.

“What the hell is going on?” I hiss at Pitch once we are in the room and out of earshot.

He shakes his head. “God only know,” he says. “I’m sorry, Juniper. This isn’t an ideal situation.”

“Nothing’s an ideal situation around here,” I remind him. “Did Faustina happen to know that she’s leaving her kid with complete strangers, one of whom is an alcoholic?”

“She didn’t care to know,” he says to me as he moves over towards the bed and pulls back the comforter to check for sheets. When Isolde ordered me furniture for the place, she made sure that everything was pre-assembled and fully dressed. But it’s been awhile since I was here, and sometimes I forget what hasn’t been done yet. This bed does not have sheets, so I dig out a new pack from a container under the bed and toss it on the bed near Pitch who is already stripping off the comforter.

“So if she finds out about Elm, she’s not going to be pissed off?” I ask.

“She’s the sort of person who always hunted for a reason to be pissed off and it doesn’t look like much has changed over the years,” he tells me with effort. He unfolds the blankets and I reach out and grab an edge of the fitted sheet as he continues, “I did tell her that Elm was here—I left out the part about the alcoholism—but she didn’t care that we had other company right now.”

“Pitch . . . I know nothing about taking care of children,” I admit. “I’m an only child, and I vaguely remember some of my friends having younger siblings, but nothing that really involved me. The last kid I had to take care of got impaled on a sword.”

Pitch stops and lowers the edge of the sheet he’s trying to stretch over the corner of the mattress. “Helping tributes through the arena is different from raising children,” he says.

“You’ve never raised any,” I point out. “So how would you know?”

“It _has_ to be different,” he says. “We’re not sending her out into a death battle.”

“So pretty much we’re both clueless,” I say.

He finishes tucking the sheet under the mattress’ corner. “Yep,” he confirms.

When he sees the hopelessness on my face, he offers me a small smile. “It’s okay,” he assures me. “We’ll get through it. Her mom will come pick her up in a few days’ time.”

“I hope you’re right,” I say as I step back from the mattress. “I better go make sure the bathroom is decent.”


	50. Chapter 50

The four of us watch the Hunger Games while eating dinner that night, which is probably testament to our degrading mental state, at least for those of us from District 7. People don’t willingly watch kids kill each other while eating, but I suppose both eating and watching the program are just tasks these days, and both must be done in order to stay alive. At any rate, we found Caecilia watching it on television, and nobody wanted to turn it off.

The announcers say that nothing of great note happened in the arena. Auburn of District 6 tripped and twisted her ankle, but she’s no longer important in his Hunger Games, so her injury means nothing to the viewers at home. The general consensus is that only an idiot would have money on her.

After dinner, Pitch asks me to distract the girl so that he can have alcohol brought up to the apartment without it being too alarming. Elm is sent to his room so he doesn’t interfere with the shipment (and he’s pretty damned drunk as it is), so I ask Caecilia if she wants to take a break from the television to read. She smiles as an answer and heads to the library without further prompting. I grab my book from the kitchen counter and the two of us sit in the spare room reading until Pitch tells us that Caecilia should probably go to bed.

We give the girl her space but show her where she can find all the things she needs—spare toothbrush and toothpaste, towels, etc. I lend her a pair of my pajamas knowing that they will be far too large for her, but since her mother dropped her off with absolutely nothing besides the clothes she was wearing, we have to make do with what we have. After she closes her bedroom door for the evening, my book and I make ourselves comfortable in my bed. Pitch doesn’t stay up much longer than to make sure the apartment is straightened up enough, and then he crawls into the sheets next to me.

“No more people in this apartment,” I tell him. “There’s only one room left—”

“Actually, I put the alcohol in the extra bedroom and locked the door,” he corrects me before I can finish my thought. “I didn’t want Elm to be tempted, and I know that we can’t have daily alcohol deliveries, especially not with Caecilia here.”

“Just make sure you hide the key,” I say.

“I did,” he says. “It’s taped to the underside of a drawer in the bathroom in the library. Second from right on the top.”

“Thanks,” I say. I’m contemplating getting a lock for the outside of Elm’s door (which is not ethical in any way), but decide that today has been too damned messed up for me to think anymore and I might as well go to bed. I set down my book at the nightstand, turn off the light, and settle in on the pillow.

Pitch makes himself comfortable next to me. He stretches his arms around me and I move into his embrace without hesitation. After everything that’s happened in the past few hours, I need his presence more than anything else. I close my eyes and listen to his breathing, but it doesn’t even out as time passes, and I know he’s having trouble getting to sleep.

“What do you think is going on?” I ask him.

“I don’t really know. Somebody set this up with the intention of allowing my past to come forward,” he says. “And now it has.”

“But who would do this? What purpose does it serve?”

His hand strokes my hair, and I feel his warm breath on my head. “I don’t know,” he answers quietly. “And I may never know. The way these things work are so complicated, so hushed. . . . You would think that it would take an elaborate network of people to pull off the various threats and punishments and everything else, and yet it’s very rare to know who and why because everything is kept so secretive.”

“But Martha was pretty blatant with what happened to Sage,” I point out.

“She is a different beast,” he explains. His fingers brush against my cheek. “She loves her power, and she thrives on making sure that others know how powerful she is, whether it’s us victors or others within the Capitol. What she did when she called me to make sure I was watching the Hunger Games is unusual, but she knew that it would hurt me and send the message that she needed to be sent.”

“Cruel,” I mutter.

“Yes, but you have to be in order to design the arenas,” he says.

“So now we have to figure out how to proceed with no idea of who is orchestrating the scenario nor what their actual goal is?” I clarify.

“That is correct,” he says. “And I’ve been thinking over what Elm said about contacting the other women, but I don’t know if I can.”

“As in you physically can’t do it or you emotionally can’t?” I ask. I focus on his fingers in my hair and allow his presence to soothe me as much as it can even as the conversation sets me on edge.

“Emotionally,” he responds heavily. “I just think that I didn’t want these kids to begin with, and that probably makes me a terrible parent. Not to mention the fact that I never even tried to contact any of them. Even if I thought that I deserved to be in their lives, I can’t just go in there and mess up their worlds just because I want to save our own asses.”

I grit my teeth and try to keep my voice even. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that these women are not the most mentally stable people,” I say. “What’s to say that these kids have great lives to begin with? I mean, Caecilia barely even blinked when her mom left her here with us—that’s not really indicative of a happy household, you know? So who’s to say that these kids won’t be relieved to find out that they’re not 100% Capitolite?”

“Juniper, you’re getting yourself worked up,” Pitch says. He runs a finger along my jaw. “Relax your muscles a bit.”

I do as instructed, but it takes several seconds for me to figure out what muscles are tense to begin with. He waits until he thinks I’m calm enough, and then he continues, “I’m going to have to think about where to go from here. I appreciate your ideas if you come across anything. But in the meantime, we really need to get some sleep.”

Once more, I settle against him. His fingers continue to run through my hair, and I close my eyes. But they only stay closed for a moment before I find myself asking, “Do you think every victor has to deal with this much bullshit whenever they come to the Capitol, or is it just us?”

“I would say that most victors have a challenging time when they’re required to visit for the Hunger Games,” he answers. “But we also do a good job of keeping the things that we’re dealing with to ourselves so that we don’t burden anyone else.”

“And thus we never know who is actually dealing with what,” I say. “Do other victors know about your ‘clients’?”

“It’s nothing we talk about, but after all these years, it’s no secret,” he answers. “They don’t know the details, but it would probably surprise no one if they found out about Caecilia, for example. And, of course, there are others who are in the same position as me, though usually with different ‘clients.’”

I run the edge of my thumbnail across the collar of his t-shirt as I think. “I’d probably go insane if I didn’t have you here,” I say to him.

“Even though most of the things that are going on are my fault?” he asks.

“Not your fault—they just happen to involve you,” I say. “But yes, I think I’d be pretty miserable if we weren’t friends. Or whatever we are.”

He kisses my forehead, his lips lingering against my skin for several long moments. I close my eyes again and wish they wouldn’t leave, but at last he moves his lips away. “Get some sleep,” he whispers.

In the morning, we find out that Auburn died before dawn when the District 4 pair came across her. I pause to watch the television station that Caecilia has it on gives us a recap of the events. The girl, meanwhile, calmly eats a bowl of cereal on the couch as the announcers tell us all about Auburn’s demise.

“You finished reading the book from yesterday?” I ask her. I had noticed that she had placed it back on the shelf this morning, and Pitch had asked me to take her to the bookstore to pick up more books that she would like. As much as I had hoped that he would want to spend time with her, I also couldn’t turn down the opportunity to visit a bookstore. . . . Even if I am planning on taking her to the one Quintus owns.

She nods.

“Are you okay if we go to the bookstore today?” I ask her.

“I don’t have any fresh clothes to wear,” she says.

I hesitate. She’s much too small for my clothing, and heaven only knows if and when her mom is planning on sending her clothes over here.

“I’ll wash what you wore yesterday. If you mom hasn’t sent over other clothes by the time we come back, we’ll get you something new to wear,” I tell her.

She looks up from her bowl of cereal and frowns at me. “You don’t have avoxes to do your laundry?” she asks.

“Um, no,” I say. “But it’s easy enough to throw it in the machine.”

She gathers up her clothes and brings them to me, then she watches curiously as I run the washer. I consider showing her how it works but it doesn’t matter if she’s just going to head back to her house and be waited on by slaves. We watch the Hunger Games until her clothes are clean, with Pitch and Elm joining us. Once she’s dressed, I tell her it’s time to leave, but she hesitates and it takes me a good few minutes to realize that she is used to wearing makeup and doesn’t want to leave the apartment without it. I swallow back the irritation—not at her, but at a society that has trained a kid that she has to cover her face with glitter and colors before she’s acceptable to be seen in public—and lend her my small collection of makeup. When she feels like she’s presentable, we head downstairs to the cab.

Caecilia doesn’t say much on the cab ride, and neither do I. I have no clue what to talk about with this child, and I’m terrified that I’ll say something _wrong_ that will either completely traumatize her or tell her something she’s not supposed to hear—or both. But once we step into the bookstore, I realize that I have little need to keep her occupied. Immediately she’s drawn to the rows of books on shelves, and I lead her towards the children’s section.

“Ah, Juniper,” comes Quintus’ voice. He appears before me, just as beautiful as ever with far too much makeup for any man.

“Do you have a tracker on me that lets you know when I enter the store?” I ask him. This earns me a smile.

But the smile shifts to one of amusement when he notices Caecilia by my side. “She has his eyes,” he comments. “Strange. I thought that was recessive. Then again, I enjoy fiction much more than science, so I suppose I might not be well-versed on genetics.”

I tell Caecilia that she can go look at books and after she vanishes into the shelves of children’s novels, I turn back to Quintus. “I’d appreciate it if this shopping trip was not announced on the evening news,” I say.

He nods. “But of course,” he says. “Is she the only one?”

“Were you hoping for more?” I ask with irritation. Did he expect me to start gathering Pitch’s children and taking them on outings to his bookstore?

He shrugs. “Not necessarily,” he says. “Now, about the novels I recommended. . . . Did you get a chance to read them?”

“I’m still working on the first one,” I say, relieved that he’s willing to talk about something other than Pitch’s unwanted children. “But I’m near the end.”

“And?” he asks as he leads me over towards a reading nook close enough to the children’s section that if Caecilia grows bored and comes to look for me, she’ll be able to find me soon enough.

“I’m not entirely sure I understand if hobbits are magical creatures or just small humans,” I admit. “They obviously have different characteristics from us besides a short stature, and the fact that one has been trusted to have such an important job that humans can’t do makes me wonder. . . .”

Quintus and I sit down in the chairs, and for the next hour and a half discuss the book while Caecilia browses for something to read. She appears after awhile and shyly asks if she can get a book; I tell her that she can get as many as she wants and to set them on the table near me when she finds them. Her grey eyes light up, and I can see Pitch so very clearly in them. She collects a sizeable number while we talk. Each time she slips over and adds one to the stack like she isn’t certain if this will be one book too many and I might tell her to put it away. I don’t, of course; there can never been enough books.

At last I say that we have to leave, and Quintus promises to have her books sent to the apartment. I tell Caecilia to take a couple with her for the meantime, and she spends several minutes trying to narrow it down.

“It was a pleasure seeing you again today, Juniper,” Quintus says as he clasps a copy of the novel we discussed in his hands. “And on your own terms at that. I know that you choose this bookstore to come to in order to avoid public attention, but I suppose it is a mark of our friendship that you saw it as an option.”

I don’t answer that because I know that he’s right that I thought I could trust him enough to come here with him. That here is safer than being in an unfamiliar bookstore whose manager doesn’t offer me protection. But I wish he weren’t; I wish that I wasn’t in a position where I thought I needed to be his protection. He might be nice to me, but he’s still a disgusting creep, and the only reason he hasn’t put his hands on me yet is because of Caecilia’s curious stares.

“Thanks for having us,” I answer somewhat awkwardly because I don’t really know how to thank him for his assistance without inflating his ego.

Once Caecilia has her books tucked under her arm, Quintus calls us a cab and bids us a good day. We thank him and climb into the back of the taxi. Caecilia lets me look through the two books she chose; neither really interests me, but I suppose if I ever got bored enough and needed some light reading, I might give them a try. When we get to the apartment, I hurry her to the elevator to avoid the prying eyes of the neighbors.

This outing has exhausted me socially. Talking to Quintus about literature is easier than talking to Quintus about literally anything else, but it still involves talking with him. I look forward to flopping on the bed and taking a nap, or even reading a book of my own. But when we step through the door, I know that’s not going to happen because my apartment’s sitting room is filled with people.


	51. Chapter 51

“They’re not all staying with us,” I say before I can stop myself. The good news is that I know most of these people who have assembled in this room; the bad news is that it looks like I interrupted something pretty serious. I scan the faces of my fellow victors: Ferrer from District 2, Elijah from District 5, Lady from District 10; there’s also a fifty-ish-year-old woman I have never met, but I’m pretty sure that it’s Joule from District 3, the one who set Esther up with her fiancé and who married a Capitolite herself in order to seek protection. And, of course, there’s Pitch and Elm.

I don’t have to be told that the conversation isn’t for Caecilia’s ears, so I direct the star-struck girl to the library, get her situated with a snack and a glass of water, and tell her that I have to have a really boring conversation with mildly interesting people. She smiles at me, but then turns to her books and begins to read. I close the door behind her and head back to the sitting room.

Pitch moves so that I can squeeze into the armchair next to him. It’s a tight fit, but we’ve maxed out the number of people this room was intended to hold, and they’ve had to drag a chair in from the kitchen to accommodate.

“It’s a rather impromptu meetings, so I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about this before,” Pitch says to me after I get settled in. His expression is strained, and he can only meet my eye for the briefest of seconds before he glances back to the others.

I’m familiar enough with the victors here. Elijah and my tributes were in an alliance last year, so we ended up working together—more or less—until my tribute lead the Careers to Elijah’s tribute. He’s in his mid-twenties or so. Good enough looking with a well-trimmed beard and always with a pair of sunglasses. He was blinded in his Hunger Games, and the Capitol refused to correct his vision—something that he is, understandably, quite bitter about. Next to him sits Lady, a year or two younger than Elijah though she won a couple years before him. She’s well-muscled, but not bulky, and she doesn’t draw much attention to herself regardless of where she is. She is more reserved than other victors, but not shy. Her cautious eyes watch everyone with interest. Next to them is the victor I haven’t personally met. She’s in her mid-fifties, though I only know that because I looked up her Games when Esther told me about her and did a bit of math; the Capitol has kept her in good condition, and she looks like she’s barely forty-five. Still, there’s an air of sophistication to her, as though she is on the outside looking in at our little group and is okay with where she stands.

“Honestly as long as everyone’s gone before I go to bed, they’re welcome to be here,” I say as the other victors watch me closely for my reaction. “Except for Elm. He can stay as long as he doesn’t puke on anything.”

Elm grumbles something but takes a drink from a bottle of whisky—probably the one from the kitchen. Keeping his fellow victor hydrated probably hasn’t been high on the list of Pitch’s concerns today, and Elm was forced to rummage through cupboards until he found something worthwhile.

“I think you’ve met everyone here,” Pitch continues. “Except for maybe Joule.”

“Good to finally meet you in person, Juniper,” Joule says. She has a pleasant, kind voice and a calming smile; I can see why Esther turned to her when she was in trouble.

“Same,” I reply.

“Pitch was explaining the situation that you two have encountered,” Ferrer tells me. He looks more at-ease in this apartment than he did when I met him a couple weeks ago in the mentor room, but he still doesn’t seem comfortable. “We were going over ideas on how to mitigate potential problems.”

I expected nothing less, but still it surprises me that Pitch has assembled such a group to help him out. I don’t know a lot about any of them—at least not as much as I know about Pitch and Elm—but I’m sure that he gathered these people for a reason. The two of us don’t talk about other victors much; I guess we just don’t like to bring “work” home with us, and the other victors are, more or less, our coworkers. So we just say what minimally needs to be said in order to get the conversation going onto a different track that doesn’t remind us about the Hunger Games and life in the Capitol. Until, of course, we are here and there’s nothing we can do to go about our lives.

“I say just meet all the kids and be done with it,” Elm contributes, likely picking up from where they had been before I walked in. He sits in the other armchair and pauses to blow across the top of the bottle like it’s some sort of instrument. “It’s going to happen eventually.”

“But if it doesn’t, then I don’t want to pull these kids into the spotlight,” Pitch objects. Which means that if somebody else decides to make a public announcement that she has one of Pitch’s kids, it will completely screw over Pitch. He’s willing to take that risk just to protect some kids he doesn’t know.

“Stop worrying about the kids and worry about yourself,” Elm says.

Pitch frowns. “And just leave them to the mercy of the press?” he asks. “I don’t wish that on any kid, mine or otherwise.”

“Pitch, I’m wondering if Elm is right,” Ferrer says. “It might be worthwhile to humor the idea.”

Pitch tenses, but he doesn’t say anything. It frightens me a little to think of the attention this would generate, both from the mothers of these children and also from the press. The idea of laying low sounds more and more appealing.

But then I think of the way Caecilia and Pitch look at each other; the girl stares at him with the utmost amazement, completely taken aback by the presence of this celebrity who she has just learned to be her father, while Pitch can’t seem to stop watching her, like he’s trying to make up for all the years he didn’t get to see her. How many other of his kids would be thrilled to know that their father was somebody famous—and maybe that famous person has the ability to give them a room full of books and a vacation from a crazy mother.

“If their mothers go to the press after you approach them and don’t give the kids the privacy they deserve, then that’s nothing you can control,” Ferrer continues. “But if the press gets to you first, they’re going to rip you apart, and those kids might be even worse off.”

“Ah, yes, I can’t wait to see Pitch on some trashy talk show where they reveal the results of the paternity tests,” Elijah comments from where he sits on the couch with Lady and Joule. He taps his cane against the rug absently.

“So obviously that would be what we’d be trying to avoid,” Ferrer says with annoyance, shooting a glare at Elijah who is none the wiser. He sighs, then he says to Pitch, “Have you kept in contact with any of the mothers?”

“No,” Pitch answers.

“But you know who they are?” Ferrer confirms.

Pitch nods. “Yes, and I know the children’s names,” he says. “Though there is a possibility that there are some who I’m not aware of.”

“If you have the names, Pitch, I could do some research,” Joule offers. “Some of them might be quite content where they are in life and not want to have you involved. If I get any idea who wants to be left alone and who would be more likely to step up, I’ll let you know.”

“Alright, thanks,” Pitch says with a nod.

“How old are they?” Lady asks.

Pitch doesn’t answer right away. He stares up towards the ceiling as though he’s mentally counting. But then he says, “Caecilia is eleven. Two are twelve. One is—ah, shit—thirteen already.”

Ferrer exhales. “A couple of mine are about the same age,” he says. “It’s a challenging age—I can’t imagine that telling a twelve-year-old kid that they suddenly have a father and that father is a victor would be easy. . . . Hopefully their mothers see that.”

“I don’t think their mothers are entirely balanced,” I mutter.

Pitch shifts uneasily in the chair, and pretends that he’s just trying to get comfortable since both of us are shoved there together.

Lady watches me for a second then asks, “The one who is here—Caecilia—her mother just left her?”

“Yes. Called me up yesterday and demanded to see me, then left her here with Juniper and me,” Pitch confirms heavily.

“She hasn’t heard from you in years but trusted you enough to take care of her kid?” she follows. “Well, both of your kid, I should say.”

Pitch shakes his head. “I guess she wanted free babysitting,” he answers. “Didn’t even send Caecilia any personal belongings or clothes like she said she would.”

I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the floor. Damned woman didn’t even bother sending her kid her clothes, and now the girl has nothing to wear but the very outfit she has on right now and a pair of pajamas that don’t fit her at all. What is _wrong_ with people?!

Lady shakes her head sadly. “Poor girl,” she says. The others look equally disturbed.

“I don’t . . . have anything against Caecilia,” Pitch says. He licks his lips and thinks carefully before he continues, “But I have no idea what to do with her.”

We don’t have an answer for him. To the best of my knowledge, Ferrer is the only one with kids, but then again, I didn’t know he even had kids until about two minutes ago so it wouldn’t surprise me if others did, too. But that doesn’t help the fact that Pitch’s situation is unique, and the manner in which he acquired the girl was quite unusual. . . . And also very depressing. I reach over and take his hand.

“She likes books,” I say.

“We can’t keep her locked in the library all the time,” he says. I’d like to protest because I’m not sure that Caecilia would actually mind being left in the library, but I know that it’s beside the point and won’t help the situation.

“Are you letting her leave the house much?” Ferrer asks.

“She went to the bookstore today,” Pitch says. “That’s as far as we’ve gotten.”

“If she’s seen with you, people will start asking questions,” Elijah points out. “Since you and Juniper are so often in the spotlight, you can’t avoid it.”

I don’t think this occurred to Pitch because a pained look crosses his face. He taps the fingers of his free hand against the armrest and takes a deep breath. “I can’t keep her locked in this apartment until her mother returns,” he says. “I can’t do that to her.”

“Pitch, at this point, you can’t avoid making the situation public to some degree,” Ferrer says, staring intently at him. “If you’re not willing to leave the girl in this apartment—which I don’t fault you, I wouldn’t want to, either—then people will start asking questions because Elijah’s right: you have too much attention on you right now to disappear into the shadows.”

“Shit,” Pitch mutters to himself. He rubs his forehead and releases my hand.

“What if he called out sick?” Lady suggests. “The only places he needs to be are the Presentation of the Victor and any sort of parties, right?”

“I don’t recommend it,” Joule advises. She clears her throat and looks at Pitch and me. “I live in the Capitol year-round, and they never fail to surprise me with their antics. One thing that remains consistent, though, is that any attempts to avoid attention usually involve greater inquiries. This isn’t an issue in most cases, but after seeing how badly they treated you two last summer, I don’t think they would accept illness as a reason for not showing up to scheduled events, especially if you don’t have a doctor to back it up.”

I’m about to suggest that maybe Dr. Castillo can vouch for us, but the words fall away in my throat. We can’t ask a doctor to put her medical license on the line for something like this.

“What about leaving her with Esther, or at least asking Esther to babysit?” I suggest, the idea of doctors and illnesses still in my mind. Esther uses her bad stomach as a reason to get out of social events as frequently as she can. “She doesn’t go to all the parties, so she might be able to keep an eye on her while we’re attending them.”

“She does go to some of the end-of-the-Games parties, though,” Elijah says.

True. I forgot that she went with me to the Presidential Palace last year following the Presentation of the Victor. I slump back in the seat, all out of ideas. And I’m not the only one who can’t come up with anything better—everyone stares blankly at each other, not wanting to look at Pitch for too long before turning and looking at someone else.

“Alright, well,” Pitch says at last. “I am just going to take her with me wherever I need to go and not try to hide her.”

“Are you sure?” Ferrer asks. “We could try to come up with alternatives.”

Pitch doesn’t look “sure” by any means, but he says, “Yes. Her mother would flip out on me if I leave her behind. And at any rate, I would rather use your brains to help me figure out what to do about the rest of them.”

“What about Caecilia’s belongings?” Lady asks before the topic changes. She looks between Pitch and Ferrer.

“I’ll call her mother later and see what’s going on,” Pitch says.

“ _I’ll_ call her,” I say. “She enjoys screaming at you.”

“What a winner,” Lady mumbles. Joule nudges her with her elbow, and Lady’s face reddens. Pitch might not have wanted the relationships or the children that resulted from them, but the older victor seems to be trying to protect him anyhow just in case he had any personal attachments.

Pitch starts to protest my offer, but inadvertently Ferrer cuts him off. “So if Joule finds out that any of these women want their children to meet you, the best thing to do would be as Elm says and contact them first,” he says. “As far as how to keep this off of a trashy talk show. . . . That I’m a little less clear on.”

“He’d have to schedule his own show first, if he really wants the upper hand,” Elm says. “Otherwise bribe them.”

I grit my teeth at the idea of bribery. These are people who were wealthy and influential enough that they were able to rent Pitch out in the first place; I don’t think there’s anything that Pitch has that they don’t already have—except, of course, his body.

“Blackmail,” Elijah says. And then he clarifies, “I mean, it’s what you’re going to need to look out for. Otherwise you might find yourself on a talk show because they’ve pinned you in a corner. Hope you don’t have any really good secrets.”

“I am pretty sure my secrets have already been revealed,” Pitch answers dryly. But his brows furrow in concern at Elijah’s words. “It’s Juniper I’m worried about.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?” I ask. “I’m fine.”

“Not if they decide that they want me to do something; you’re the perfect way to get me to get it done,” he answers.

I know that he’s thinking about the threat that was held over his head: if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, I die. It might be a hollow threat, but Pitch won’t make a decision knowing that it’s a possibility it could happen, even if these women are not tied to Martha at all. Instead he fears that he’ll be pushed into a shitty situation and knows that he won’t be able to say no because it would mean that he puts me in direct risk. A surge of panic rushes through me and I take a deep breath.

“Another thing to consider,” Ferrer comments. He pauses and thinks as though he’s mentally going through the ever-growing list of shit that complicates matters.

“If you break up with Juniper, get through this, and then get back together—” Elm starts.

“No,” I cut him off. “This is stupid. I’ll be fine.”

But I won’t be fine if I have to be separated from Pitch. And neither will Pitch be fine. Because it’s become so clear to me that we need each other. We support each other mutually; if you remove one of us, the other will fall apart. I might be able to suffer through it myself, but I can’t do that to Pitch. He needs me right now more than ever. And, honestly, I’ll be completely selfish and admit that I don’t want to break up with him because I don’t want to be miserable, either.

“No, if they’re really intent on hurting Pitch by using Juniper, they’ll know that breaking up is just a ruse,” Ferrer says. “The only tactic here we can rely on is trying to guess where they are and stay one step ahead of them.”

“Which means that Pitch just has to do whatever they want him to anyhow, just slightly ahead of schedule,” Lady protests. “Surely there is another way.”

“Any suggestions?” Ferrer asks.

She grimaces. “Unfortunately, no,” she admits. “Sorry.”

“It won’t be an issue to use my husband’s connections to our advantage,” Joule assures her. “We might be able to bypass this entire issue if we’re very lucky. More realistically, we can at least cut down on the amount of damage to Pitch and Juniper—and the kids—by anticipating people’s moves.”

Pitch shifts uneasily in the chair again. “Do you think you could find out if the kids even want to meet me?” he asks her.

“Possibly,” she answers evenly as she studies his reaction. “It would be more challenging to find that out, of course.”

“Would that make a difference?” asks Elijah. “If their mothers instigate this issue, then it doesn’t matter what the kids want any more than it matters what you want.”

“I’d just like to know,” he says quietly.

It would be absolutely shit to have to meet kids who don’t want anything to do with him. But Caecilia has taken this pretty well, all things considered. Then again, she does have a mother who abandoned her here right after accusing Pitch of doing the same thing.

“Why don’t we ask Caecilia?” I suggest.

“Ask her if the other kids want to know?” Elijah asks.

“No, ask her if she’s happy that she knows,” I say with annoyance.

Pitch hesitates, but Ferrer says, “It’s worth a shot.”

With no additional insight into how to proceed from here, Pitch suggests that we take a break. He assigns Lady the task of ordering whatever everyone wants for lunch and hands her his credit card. Then he excuses himself to make a phone call. Although he didn’t invite me, I slip away after him into the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you know, but it's time for another Choose Your Own Adventure!
> 
> Dear readers, I would like to know whether you'd like to see more of the children plotline develop with, well, children. Or if you'd rather the story focus on other things. Obviously we can have this plotline continue AND have other things happen, but because I'm only the author and not a reader, my perspective on things is a bit skewed. Meeting more characters can be fun, but I don't want to make people feel like this is a giant fetch quest or that they have to Catch Them All. And since I really have no real end goal for this story that won't be affected by this decision, I'm pretty open to your opinions.


	52. Chapter 52

“Go back out there and keep people occupied,” Pitch tells me. But I only close the door behind me as an answer. He doesn’t ask again and instead turns his attention to his phone which he stares at for several long seconds. I walk over to the bed and sit cross-legged on my side near my pillow.

“I’ll call her,” I tell him. “I was serious about that. She’s looking for any reason to scream at you, but so far she’s been decent toward me.”

He looks up at me. “It’s okay, Juniper,” he says. But I hold out my hand and he reluctantly gives me the phone and joins me on the bed. I turn the phone over and rub a finger across the screen to remove a piece of lint stuck to the surface as he instructs me what buttons to choose.

 _Be calm,_ I tell myself. _Do not let her see how angry you are._

I keep the phone on speaker as I listen to the phone ring several times. She might not answer it; maybe she’s in vacation mode already and decided to ignore her cell phone until she’s ready to pick up her daughter. But at long last I hear her voice in a simple _“Hello?”_

“Hi, Faustina, it’s me, Juniper,” I say pleasantly enough despite the bubbling anger within my chest. Pitch leans in but keeps quiet.

“Juniper, lovely to hear from you,” the woman says. I roll my eyes and glance at Pitch, but he keeps his attention locked onto the phone.

“Yeah, so, um, Caecilia doesn’t have any clothes, so I just wanted to check that her suitcase didn’t get lost on the way,” I say.

Faustina sighs heavily. “Yes, unfortunately I didn’t have time to send it yesterday. Would you do me a favor and put Pitch on the line?”

Bullshit. I swallow hard to keep my own emotions in check.

“He’s busy,” I reply. “What do you want us to do about her clothes?”

“Really, this is something I should discuss with her father,” she says.

I stare with irritation at the phone, but all I say is, “Yeah, sure, I’ll go get him.”

After a few seconds of just hanging onto the phone, I pass it over to Pitch. _“Keep it on speaker,”_ I mouth to him so that he doesn’t wander off and cut me out of whatever drama is about to ensue.

“Faustina? What did you want us to—”

But before he can get the question out of his mouth, Faustina immediately tears into him: “How DARE you demand anything else from me! You neglected her for _eleven years_! The least you can do is buy some clothes for that poor child!”

Pitch winces at her words, and clasps onto the phone. He tries to brace himself for the tirade, but nothing he can do will protect him from the venom spewing from her mouth. The anger, the outrage—it’s so audible in her words, that she must be spitting all over her phone as she screams at him.

“I’m starting to think that it was a damned good thing that you were not in her life all this time, not if THIS is how you treat her! Just go buy her some clothes with your own money. It’s not like you gave her a dime these past eleven years! You are an absolutely wretched father, and I cannot believe what a waste of space you are!”

Oh hell no.

She does not talk to Pitch, or anyone else, like that. But _especially_ not Pitch. And not after everything that she did to him. I tear the phone away from him despite his protests.

“Faustina? It’s Juniper again,” I say before she can go any further. I barely keep the anger off my tongue though I grip the phone full-force without concern that I might snap it in half.

She pauses, and when she continues she sounds quite normal again. “Is Pitch still there?” she asks.

“No. And don’t _ever_ talk to him like that again, you asshole,” I say, and then I disconnect the phone call. The silence that falls in the room is somewhat satisfying despite the tension of the conversation. Still, the absolute wickedness of that woman leaves fire burning inside of me, and I grit my teeth together to keep from saying anything else.

Pitch stares wide-eyed at me. His mouth opens, but it takes him a second to say, “Juniper! You _cannot_ talk to her like that! She has way too much power and influence and—”

“Shut up, Pitch,” I snap. “I don’t care about power or influence or anything of that sort right now. She’s cruel to you, she’s cruel to her daughter. And _somebody_ had to say something to her, at least once in her life.”

The phone rings again, and I know that she’s calling right back to chew the both of us out. Pitch reaches for the phone, but I twist so it’s out of his reach and hit the button to accept the call.

Immediately she launches in, “You listen to me you little—”

“No. _You_ listen to _me_ ,” I cut her off. She falls into a stunned silence, and I know that I only have a few seconds before she rebounds. “Pitch is happy to see his daughter again, and he’s more than willing to spend money on clothes and whatever else she needs. However, _you_ told him—and Caecilia, might I add—that you would have her belongings sent over here, but you didn’t. So _you_ are not allowed to yell at Pitch, or anyone else for that matter, because _you_ failed to do what you said you would. So unless you’re calling back to apologize to Pitch, you can hang the fuck up right now.”

“You insolent—”

“That’s not an apology, so we’ll talk with you later. Bye.”

I hang up the phone. Then, before she can call back again, I set it on mute and hand it back to Pitch. He takes it in his hand but his eyes are locked onto me. I think he’ll chew me out for what I just did and I don’t care. Let him. I’d do it a hundred times over if it was all that was needed to put that damned woman in her place.

“I wish you had the ability to tell people to shut up more often,” he finally says.

“I can’t. Otherwise you’ll lecture me,” I reply. Anger still courses through me, and I shake the hand that had been holding the phone like I can expel the excess emotion right out of it.

He smiles sadly. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. But you’re really going to get yourself in trouble again, and I can’t let that happen.”

He looks down at the phone in his hand, and the screen displays an incoming call from Faustina’s number. His eyes linger on it for a moment as though he contemplates answering it, but he only slips the phone in his pocket.

“Have I told you how attractive you are when you’re angry?” he says, his eyes meeting mine. This time I don’t shy away from his flirting because I _am_ angry, and that overwhelms any embarrassment I feel at his words.

“Now’s not the time, Pitch,” I say with irritation. Yet when he pulls me closer, I find myself kissing him anyhow as I try to forget the phone call and the situation and the fact that there’s a random kid in the library that we don’t know what the hell to do with. With his lips on mind and his arms around me, all the anger begins to seep away.

At last he pulls away enough to say, “We need to go check on everybody.”

“Right,” I say as I remember all the people we abandoned in the apartment to make the phone call. Wouldn’t be good to sit here making out while neglecting them. I move away from Pitch and off the bed. “I’ll go check on Caecilia.”

Pitch follows me to the door. “I’ll make sure that they’re actually ordering food.”

I knock on the library door and slip inside while Pitch goes into the sitting room. They will probably want to know what Faustina said on the phone, so I’ll have to buy a bit of time here with Caecilia before allowing her out of the library.

“You’ve made good progress,” I say to her as I sit down in the chair opposite her. She’s a quarter of the way into a book that must be nearly two hundred pages.

“Thank you for buying me books,” she says as she looks up. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.”

I nod. “Don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “I’m always good for an excuse to go to a bookstore.”

She glances from me towards the door and then back. “All those people out there. . . . They’re victors?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I’ve seen them all on TV, but I didn’t expect to see them here in person,” she says. She smiles and sighs. She’s mesmerized by everything that’s happened to her recently. A celebrity father with a celebrity fiancée and celebrity friends. What more could a young Capitol girl ever want? I try to put myself in her position for a fraction of a second, but the fact that we are “celebrities” because we murdered other teenagers really jars me out of it to the point where I have to dismiss the thought outright.

“I wasn’t expecting to see them here, either. That was a bit of a rude awakening,” I agree.

Her fingers brush the pages of the book. “They’re here because of me?”

I don’t answer her right away. Had she been listening in to our conversation? Maybe it’s been my experience, but I can’t exactly trust little kids to not eavesdrop and then run away with it; perhaps we should have been more cautious with our words. But, then again, it’s quite possible that this girl knows that we were talking about her because I told her that I was going to talk to them and then left her by herself in this room.

“They’re Pitch’s and my friends,” I tell her. “Sometimes we hang out. Did you come up in conversation? Yes. Pitch wasn’t expecting your mom to call him yesterday, and he certainly wasn’t expecting her to leave you with him.”

She chews on her lower lip for a moment, her eyes turned back down to the book but no longer seeing the words on the pages.

“We have ordered lunch—or they were supposed to, at least, I assume they did—so let’s go out and see if it has come yet,” I say.

She closes her book but doesn’t move. I stare at her for a second, not certain what the problem is. “May I bring the book with me?” she asks.

“You should,” I tell her. “It’s always good to have a book with you.”

She smiles at me and picks up the book. The two of us head out of the library and join the others in the sitting room where they sit bickering over who is going to order what from the menu. So I guess they didn’t actually order anything yet.

“They spent the entire time arguing over where they wanted to get food from,” Pitch tells me as I flop down on the ground next to his chair. Caecilia lowers herself next to me and opens the book on her lap. “Now they want to—oh, Caecilia, you can have this chair.”

“I’m okay, thank you,” she answers, looking up briefly before going back to her novel. Pitch then offers the chair to me, but I tell him I’m fine on the floor, too.

The conversations in the room have quieted a little now that everyone has realized that Caecilia is back out, and they watch her curiously. They have questions, but they know it’s not their business and they can’t ask without sounding like one of the dreaded Capitol citizens themselves. Still, they study her as though they can glean some information out that way. Except for Elijah who has commandeered the credit card and menu from Lady and is giving voice instructions for his phone to auto-dial the restaurant.

Pitch starts to introduce people to Caecilia until everyone realizes that Elijah is on the phone, and then they start giving him their orders and he ignores them all. Instead he gets some taco platter or another, and when people give him crap about not actually listening to what they wanted, he only shrugs, holds out the credit card, and says, “You guys probably should have talked one at a time, then.”

Joule takes the credit card from him with an amused smile and hands it back to Pitch.

Then Pitch re-starts the introductions, and everybody gives Caecilia their full attention. She’s so mesmerized by all the “celebrities” in the room that she can barely get out more than a few polite phrases. They start asking her questions that are simple enough for her to answer: How old is she? Where in the Capitol does she live? What grade is she in? Does she like school?

Caecilia answers each question politely, but she soaks up the attention they lay on her. Pitch, who isn’t quite so involved in the questioning, studies her carefully. I can’t read his face well enough to know what might be going through his mind, but there’s sadness in his eyes as he watches her bask in the attention, her glittering cheeks flushed with excitement and the smile never leaving her face.

I’m drawn away when Lady asks where the restroom is, and I point her to the one in the library. It never occurred to me until now how inconvenient it is to not have a toilet accessible through a common area. But when she excuses herself, I get up to start gathering plates and silverware together. Joule asks if she can see the library, so I tell her that she’s more than welcome to. Ferrer and Elm get into a conversation about life, and Elijah meanders towards the porch off the sitting room claiming that the place has gotten too stuffy.

When the food finally comes, it arrives with its own plates and silverware so I place back the ones that I got out. Everyone helps themselves to whatever they want, and I tell them that there are drinks in the fridge. It’s pretty much just canned milk, Elm’s alcohol, and a few sodas that they’re going to have to fight over if they really want them. Then I head out to gather Elijah.

“Food is here,” I tell him as I step onto the porch.

“Oh, I know,” he says. “I’m letting the others get what they want, then I’ll be in.”

“They will eat everything first,” I tell him.

“Right, right. I forget that we’re victors and survival of the fittest is fair game at meal times,” he answers. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. When I start to go back inside, he says, “Stay out her a second, Juniper.”

“More advice?” I ask him as I close the sliding door.

He shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “I just wanted ask how you were doing and make sure that Pitch isn’t driving you too mad.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Considering the circumstances—which aren’t Pitch’s fault.”

“I know, I probably phrased that wrong,” he admits. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was.”

“I’m just hoping that this ends soon,” I tell him. “I’m tired of all the drama. Who cares if there’s a wedding? Who cares if Pitch has kids?”

Elijah laughs. “You’re missing the bigger picture,” he says to me. “Come.”

I move closer to him so that it would be harder for us to be overheard. The balconies of the apartments are spaced out far enough apart that I don’t have to worry much that somebody directly near me will overhear, but there’s always the risk. And, of course, there’s always the risk of bugs. But as I lean up against the wrought iron railing, Elijah says, “It’s more than entertainment. Sure, they can use that to keep the public happy. But it’s just another control tactic.”

“But _why_? That’s what I want to know,” I say as I stare out into the street down below us where people’s lives are going on without thoughts of the struggles of the victors living here. “It’s not like Pitch was doing anything out of line. Me either.”

It’s hard not think of my conversation with Quintus and how he pointed out that I have drawn attention because I volunteered for a stranger. Since then, the two of us have kept things quiet, and I’ve done everything I could to keep off the Capitol’s radar. But it’s hard to fathom that this mess is the direct result of Pitch telling Martha “no.” She punished him, and that was it. So why the hell did somebody leak the fact that Pitch has kids in the hope that things would get more complicated for us?

“Think a little bit deeper,” Elijah says. “They’re keeping us distracted.”

“Wait, they’re keeping _us_ distracted?” I ask. That’s what they do to the Capitol citizens. Distract them with excitement and betting and all sorts of things. But we victors can see through that bullshit right away.

“Ah, see, if they leave us to our own devices, there’s a chance we might become discontent with our lives, and that wouldn’t go over too well,” he says. “You know a few decades ago before the population boom, there was a bit of a rebellion.”

“I know that,” I say. “And the Capitol squashed it, etcetera.”

“Right, but they don’t say that the victors had a pretty good presence,” he says. “And since victors are more often than not quite popular with their home districts, it could have ended very poorly for the Capitol.”

“Victors started to rebel?” I ask breathlessly. The idea that we could do something in order to change the world. . . .

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he tells me. “Obviously things weren’t as successful as people hoped they would be, and the victors were punished accordingly—though, of course, covertly—but there are some people in the Capitol who no doubt still remember this, and they want to make sure that it can’t possibly happen again.”

“By punishing us before we even try anything,” I say.

Elijah shrugs. “Can you say you’re surprised?”

“No,” I answer. “But it’s pretty messed up.”

“Of course it is,” he says. He taps his cane absently on the bars. “But think about it this way: when I just told you this, for the briefest of moments you were excited. I heard it in your voice. And if that’s your reaction just on hearing about this part of history, then how would you react if you thought that there was a chance for it to happen in the present?”

I swallow hard at that. Had I really come across as that eager? My cheeks burn and I stare down at the ground several stories below.

“Juniper?” he says.

“Hmm?”

“We didn’t have this conversation,” he tells me.

“What conversation?” I ask.

“Good,” he says. “Now go keep Ferrer from eating all the tacos. I’ll be in in a minute.”

But as I step back into the apartment, my mind buzzes with information. I had heard of the population boom, and how the districts had grown angry with their living conditions; this was all tied together with the increased standard of living that we have now. But to think that there was an underlying _rebellion_ with victors at the helm. . . . I know that I can say nothing, and that may be the hardest part of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your feedback in the previous chapter. (I'm still open to thoughts, of course - but I have a few more chapters that were ready to go.)


	53. Chapter 53

Caecilia wants to watch the Hunger Games after everybody leaves, so Pitch reluctantly lets her turn on the television. It’s not like he can tell the girl she can’t watch it because denying someone the chance to watch the Hunger Games would be, perhaps, the most dangerous thing for a victor to do. So the three of us sit around watching the three remaining tributes for awhile. Elm has vanished; I’m not sure if he went outdoors to see the others off and then got lost, or if he is in his bedroom drinking.

It’s clear that nothing too exciting is going on in the arena right now, and it’s probably only a matter of time before they drive the three Careers together.

“Where do you think they’ll have the finale?” Caecilia asks as the cameras switch from the District 4 pair to the District 1 girl.

“I don’t know if they’re going to have a finale,” Pitch says.

“Why’s that?” she asks, turning away from the screen to look at him.

“Well it would be two against one,” he says as he nods at the District 1 girl. “She would be at a distinct disadvantage.”

“So? Sometimes they’ll make a finale even if it’s lopsided,” she responds.

“That’s true,” Pitch says as he carefully reads her expression. She stares back eagerly to hear what he has to say, and he continues, “But people are betting on the District 1 girl because they really think she’ll win, so the gamemakers have to be careful how they bring the tributes together.”

“Ohhh,” Caecilia says. “Well, I hope that they end the Hunger Games soon because it’s a little boring watching everyone walk around for days on end.”

I exhale sharply. Typical Capitolite.

 _But it IS boring watching people wander around,_ I find myself thinking. They don’t have any alternate storylines to focus on, and the three remaining tributes are in relatively good health. And anyway, once two of them die, we can start thinking about heading home.

Maybe.

I glance at Caecilia. What the hell is going to happen to her? What is going to happen to Pitch?

I wonder suddenly if Faustina dangled Caecilia in front of Pitch so that he’ll get attached to the girl and want to stay in the Capitol more to be around her. _And then what?_ I think. _She’ll just want to rip the kid away from him so that he’ll be more miserable than ever._

It worries me that maybe I’m starting to understand the Capitol mindset a little too well.

After a few more minutes, Pitch sets the television on mute and turns to his daughter.

“Caecilia, I spoke with your mother today on the phone,” he says. The girl’s attention immediately leaves the screen and latches onto him. He continues, “She was unable to have your luggage sent to you, so she would like me to get you clothes for while you’re here. I’m sorry that it worked out that way because I’m sure you’d rather have your things, but we can have the clothes delivered here so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“She forgot to send me my stuff and didn’t care to go back to get it,” the girl comments. “And you don’t want to take me shopping.”

“Acute observations,” I say from the armchair where I sit curled up with my book.

Pitch shoots me a look before he says to her, “Yes, she forgot to send you your suitcase. And yes, I don’t want to take you shopping. It’s been ages since I went shopping in the Capitol—I very rarely go even in District 7—and the idea is a little, um, scary. That can be something we try in the future. But for now, we can order and have it delivered.”

“Men,” she says with an eye roll.

I stare at her, but she’s gone back to the television, completely oblivious that she has managed to silence both Pitch and me with that comment.

Pitch clears his throat to get her attention. “When you’re ready to take a break, let me know—I want to get your clothes ordered so they get delivered tonight,” he says.

Caecilia turns off the television, and Pitch retrieves his tablet from the bedroom. For the next hour, the two of them go through various stores where he buys her almost whatever she wants to wear. He puts his foot down a couple of times for outfits he says are not appropriate for an eleven year old, but other than that she gets what she wants. She thanks him, but overall doesn’t appear too impressed that her father bought her more clothes in the last hour than most kids in District 7 get in a year or two. I finish my book and begin working on the sequel as I watch them over the top of the pages. Pitch tries hard to get her to like him. I think she’d like him even if he locked her in her bedroom all day long, though.

They’ve almost finished when Dr. Castillo shows up (I admit that I had completely forgotten about her), so I take Pitch’s place with the tablet while he leads the doctor towards Elm’s bedroom.

“Let’s get you some makeup,” I tell the girl, and she brightens instantly. I have to monitor her purchases with great care because her love of anything glittery exceeds what a kid—even a Capitol kid—should be wearing. By the time Pitch returns and I hand him back the tablet, I’ve let Caecilia purchase nearly $400 of makeup. Pitch looks at the receipt displayed on the tablet and “thanks” me for helping. I only smile at him and return to my armchair.

But now that the girl’s set, Pitch lowers the tablet and studies her hard. She looks right back at him in silence. He looks like he’s about to say something but then the doorbell rings again. I stand up to answer it, and to my surprise it’s an avox with a big box of books on a dolly—in all the chaos of the day, I had forgotten that we were expecting a delivery. I welcome him in and lead him to the library, where he puts the box down in a corner. I thank him and he leaves without issue.

By the time I settle back in the armchair, Dr. Castillo emerges from the room.

“We’ve set a plan together,” she tells Pitch. “Elm will need to fill you in on the details.”

“Thank you, Dr. Castillo,” he says to her as he accompanies her to the door.

“He’s going to be fine as long as he stays on track,” she assures him. “But we will talk about that later. It was nice seeing you again.”

She glances towards Caecilia and me, and gives us a smile. Then she excuses herself and heads out of the apartment. Pitch closes the door behind her and then returns to his seat on the couch near Caecilia. Now that the apartment has calmed down, she turns her attention to the television again and watches the recaps.

At this point, I’d rather watch the tributes wander around the arena aimlessly than have more people randomly show up in my apartment. The victors are nice, Dr. Castillo is nice, book deliveries are great . . . but I’m exhausted. It’s only late afternoon, and I want to be done for the day. So I half read my book, half watch television as camera alternates between District 1 and District 4 progress through the arena.

“Caecilia, I want to talk with you,” Pitch says after a couple minutes. Although I know that he’s probably okay with me being here—otherwise he would have excused them to go into the library—I still feel like maybe this is a conversation that I’m not supposed to be part of. So I raise the book in front of my face and try to read, though I know that it’s more of a disguise than anything because I’ll just have to go back through the pages later. When he has the girl’s attention, Pitch turns off the television and continues, “I am sorry that I haven’t been around until now. And I don’t know how much your mom told you, but she was the one who contacted me. But regardless of what anyone says, I am happy that you’re here and I regret not meeting you sooner.”

She slowly nods.

“I don’t want to disturb your life. I know that you have your home and family and friends, and I don’t want to do anything that will make things uncomfortable for you. But I need you to tell me if you want to spend time with me, or if you would rather I stay away,” he says. Each words is chosen carefully, pruned and plucked specifically for the desired purpose. “People don’t know that you’re my daughter. Soon they will know, and that might make things uncomfortable for you. I will do my best to try to keep people from bothering you about it, but they might go around me to ask you questions or make you unhappy.”

“You never told anyone about me?” she asks. Despite the sadness in her words, her expression doesn’t change.

“Your mother and I . . . left on not happy terms,” he answers heavily. “It was nothing against you. I had to go back to District 7, and she, of course, couldn’t.”

She nods solemnly as she takes it in. It must be a lot for a child to learn that she has a father after years of thinking she had none. All things considered, she appears to be handling it well. Then she says, “Mom said you left because you are a whore and you were sleeping with other women.”

I drop the book from my hands and it thumps to the rug beneath the chair.

Pitch stares at the coffee table, no longer able to look at his daughter. He disappears into thought, and I wonder if he’s just checked out entirely, unable to handle this conversation anymore. It was bad enough that he had a child thrust into his life, but now to have had the mother tell her daughter these things is absolutely disgusting. What the hell sort of parent even uses that sort of language around her kid anyhow?

But then Pitch says, “She’s right. I was sleeping around. And I have other children in the Capitol, like you. I don’t know any of them because I never took the time to get to know them. I’m sorry, Caecilia, but I want you to know that what I said is true: I’m happy that you’re here.”

And now I want to scream. If I hadn’t dropped the book already, I’d throw it right now. Maybe I’d even throw it at Pitch because what the HELL is he doing?! Faustina and all the others are pieces of flaming shit. They abused him and took advantage of him, and now they slander him. And he’s just going right along with it—taking the fall for them. I grit my teeth and try to get my breathing under control, but it doesn’t work.

Before I have a chance to say any of the thousand things that threaten to spew forth from my mouth, I jump to my feet, stomp out of the room, and throw myself into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me. My vision darkens, and I can barely see well enough to make it over to the bed. My hip catches the side of the dresser, and then I can no longer hold myself together.

With a sudden howl that bursts free from my throat, I swipe my hand across the top of the dresser, sending everything on top—books, clothing, jewelry, makeup—falling to the floor. It’s not _good enough_ , and I stagger towards the bathroom where I begin to grab and smash anything that I possibly can: makeup, toothbrushes, hand-held mirrors. Even though I know that it will only end in pain, I punch the mirror hanging on the wall just to hear it shatter. Still, the anger rages through me, and I turn to the wall behind me and start punching it and screaming as loud as I can. I’m crying, but I know it’s not from pain because even though I can see the blood on the wall, I don’t hurt at all. I want to hurt. I want to _feel something_. But I don’t. I can’t. I collapse onto the floor in a heap and sob silently until there’s no more tears left inside me.

The shards of glass glitter in the overhead light and I know that I’ve really messed this place up. I know that I’ll regret it, once I start feeling things again.

If I start feeling things again.

Footsteps approach me, and someone crouches down right next to me. At first I think it’s Pitch, but when I crane my neck to see who belongs to the shoes near my head, I realize it’s Elm.

“You really made quite the mess,” he says as he observes the chaos that surrounds us. But then he reaches down and helps me into a sitting position, careful to sweep away the broken glass so that neither of us cut ourselves. Then he sits right next to me.

“You’re scaring them,” he says. “I mean, you’re scaring me, too. How the hell did you manage to destroy everything in the bathroom?”

I stare at the bathroom cupboards but don’t answer.

“I don’t recommend my lifestyle, not by any means. I know it’s not for you,” he says. “But I think you need this right now.”

He offers me a bottle, already opened but not yet touched. He shouldn’t be doing this. He knows that he shouldn’t tempt me, and he knows that Pitch will kill him if he finds out—which he _will_ find out. But at this point, does that matter? I stare at it for several seconds before I reach out, take it, and chug it back before I can think twice about what I’m doing.


	54. Chapter 54

I’m three bottles in by the time Pitch finds Elm and me sitting in the shattered bathroom drinking together, and I think it’s only because Caecilia’s in the apartment that he doesn’t murder the both of us. I can’t see straight and I can’t talk straight; Pitch quickly tells me to shut my mouth when I try to explain that it’s not Elm’s fault. He kicks Elm out and tells him to go to his room, and then he helps me to my feet and escorts me over to the bed.

The room sways while I walk, and the distance seems to have doubled since the last time I went from the bathroom to the bed. But once I’m there, he helps me lay down on the mattress, removes my shoes, and positions me on my side. Then he goes to clean the bathroom, except when I get up to help him, he has to take me back to the bed and get me to lay back down.

“Juniper, you need to stay here,” he says. “I will clean the bathroom.”

“Kie—” I start, but I can’t get the word out, and I’m not sure what I was going to say anyhow. I mumble the same syllable a couple of times but to no avail.

He stares at me a second, then says, “If you’re asking about Caecilia, she’s in the library reading right now. Don’t worry about her. Get some rest.”

Pitch leaves me then, and he heads to the bathroom. What happens from there, I don’t really know. My head feels funny and my eyelids begin to droop as drowsiness takes over me. In the distance, I hear noises. None of them really register. Eventually Pitch returns and has me sit up and drink water.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

I nod even though it’s quite possible that I might die. I don’t know. I’m not feeling well.

“We’ll talk more when you’re sober,” he tells me.

Oh, right. I’m drunk. _That’s_ why I don’t feel well.

He helps me lay back down again and tucks the blanket around me. Then he sits on the edge of the bed next to me and stays there while I fall asleep.

I wake up here and there, but immediately sleep pulls me right back. It’s after midnight when I wake up and feel somewhat more coherent. But also pretty nasty. I start to get up to take a shower, but Pitch asks me where I’m going. The sudden noise causes me to jump, and I nearly fall out of bed. He’s sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room—the one we always just throw clothes on and forget about until we need whatever we discarded. But now those clothes are on the floor and he’s made himself a spot right there.

“Why are you over there?” I ask him as I steady myself on the edge of the bed. The room no longer moves around, but I still don’t feel quite solid on my feet.

“Where are you going?” he repeats, and now we’re stuck in a battle of questions.

So I say, “To take a shower.”

“Wait until the morning,” he says. “There’s an electrolyte drink next to the bed. Drink it, then go back to sleep.”

I sit back down on the edge of the bed, no longer as intent to head to the shower. As gross as I feel, I’m also weirdly tired right now, and I don’t want to make the effort to go to the bathroom. Yet my bladder feels full, so I know that I at least have to work up the effort to make the trip to the toilet.

“Hang on, I have to pee,” I tell him, and then I head off to the bathroom.

When I return, Pitch is still sitting in the chair, so as I climb back into bed I rephrase my previous question: “Why are you in the chair?”

“You were drunk,” he says. “Now drink the electrolytes so you don’t get dehydrated.”

I reach over and grab the bottle off the nightstand. The liquid inside is too sweet like it needs to be diluted, and I only manage a few mouthfuls before I slip the lid back on and return my attention to Pitch.

“I’m not drunk anymore,” I say. “And if you stay in that chair, you’ll never get any sleep.”

After several seconds, he pushes himself out of the chair and heads over to the bed. I set the bottle back on the nightstand and settle into bed. He pauses before he reluctantly climbs in and starts adjusting the sheets and blanket around us.

When I wiggle into his arms, he protests.

I roll my eyes. “Honestly, I’m not drunk,” I say.

He contemplates this for a moment and then holds me closer to him. But his body is tense, and I can’t help wondering if it is because I had been drinking or because of, well, everything else going on in life. I can’t stop the guilt that slips into me knowing that I caused more stress for Pitch than what he already was dealing with.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. No context, but I don’t think any is needed right now.

“Me too,” he replies.

I frown even though I know he can’t see it. “For what? You didn’t do anything.” I move my hand and press my palm against his chest, fingers spread out so that I can feel his heart beat through his shirt. It’s a rapid thump, heavy but steady.

“I couldn’t tell Caecilia the truth,” he says to me. Sadness weighs down his words. “I know that . . . upset you. But I won’t make things worse for her.”

“You’ll make them worse for yourself, but not for her,” I say.

“Yes,” he admits. “And I’m sorry that it makes things worse for you, too. But I cannot tell a child that her mother forced me to have sex with her and that she is a product of that. Nor can I tell her that her mother has been lying to her all these years in order to place the blame on me. If it makes me look bad, so be it—the truth isn’t worth ruining that girl.”

I realize I’m crying again. Tears dribble out of my eyes, and my nose starts to run. I sniffle, and Pitch pulls me closer to him.

“It’s okay,” he whispers to me. “It’ll be okay.”

It won’t be okay, and we both know it. But I allow myself to believe that it will be, if only for this moment, because I don’t think I can manage to think about what the future actually holds in store for us.


	55. Chapter 55

When I wake up the next morning feeling decent, Pitch mumbles something about “youth” and “just wait til you try drinking when you’re older.” I thank him for bandaging my hands, but he tells me that it was Elm who did it. And other than that, we don’t talk about last night’s events.

Caecilia eats her cereal in front of the television again, but she looks completely disinterested in what is happening. Which is pretty much nothing, just the same as yesterday. She informs me that the District 4 tributes were faced with a snake-like fire muttation last night, but they managed to defeat it with their weapons. The boy, she told me when I express confusion, found another spear at the Cornucopia.

I can’t fathom eating this morning. My stomach still feels a little weird, and I’m not hungry. Pitch poured himself a bowl of cereal when Caecilia ate, but it sits untouched on the end table next to his place on the couch. So much for taking care of himself. . . .

“I can’t imagine it’ll go on for much longer,” Caecilia says. She’s probably right. She might be a kid, but she’s been watching the Hunger Games since she was quite little, and, as a Capitol citizen, she’s the target audience they’re trying to entertain. If others like her are bored, then the Hunger Games will end soon enough.

“That you are right,” Elm says when he walks in.

Pitch looks up from the crossword puzzle he’s working on.

“They’ve scheduled a finale party for noon,” Elm tells him.

“There’s going to be a finale!” Caecilia exclaims. She nearly drops her cereal bowl but pushes it onto the coffee table just in time.

So I guess they are willing to pit two against one. The bets will be shifting now, because I doubt that even the most faithful supporters of the District 1 girl will think she can pull off killing two other Careers at once, no matter how good she is.

But a finale party also raises the issue of what to do with Caecilia. Under normal circumstances, Pitch and I would go together, but now that we have the girl, if we take her in public, everyone will want to know who she is and there’s no point in lying when the truth will be revealed sooner or later.

“I can stay here,” I offer to Pitch.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “We will all go.”

Caecilia looks curiously at her father. It takes Pitch a couple of seconds to realize that she’s watching him, and then he nearly misses her pleading look entirely.

“Is that going to be a problem if you come with us, Caecilia?” he asks her. Her eyes light up and her mouth opens but no words come out. Pitch quickly scrambles to say, “If it’s not, we can arrange—”

“I’d _love_ to go!” she breathes, her full attention still locked on him. But the excitement quickly turns to panic. “What do I wear?”

I wonder if her clothes didn’t come yet, but then Pitch tells her that I’ll help her choose an outfit, and I recall that I was kind of angry and then drunk last night so anything could have happened in the meantime.

“Let’s go see what you have, Caecilia,” I say, and set my book to the side. Caecilia jumps to her feet and races back to her bedroom without waiting for me. I stand up and start to follow after her, but Pitch catches my arm.

“Thanks, Juniper,” he says.

I’m about to ask him if yesterday’s shopping spree was too much for him, but then I also remember that my emotional rampage probably didn’t help his already frayed nerves, so I’m in no position to give him a bad time. I hate dealing with wardrobes, but I suppose this is my penance for last night’s freak-out event.

Caecilia has already put away all of her clothes in the closet and drawers, which is beyond impressive. I don’t remember the last time I got clothing and put it away within the first twenty-four hours, but then again, I don’t find nearly the same fascination with fashion that this kid does. She has everything arranged in the closet by type: shirts, dresses, skirts, pants. Her underclothes and socks are tucked into the drawers. Several pairs of shoes are lined up at the bottom of the closet on a little rack that must’ve come with the apartment’s furnishings.

Already Caecilia runs through the clothes in her closet, babbling about which dresses are made for everyday wear and which ones would be _perfect_ for this afternoon. She pulls things out and asks for my opinion, but it’s hard to tell how much she actually considers my thoughts because she’s already spewing forth ideas and critiques about each piece. It takes a few wardrobe changes before she finds a dress that satisfies her, and then begins the process of makeup.

“You know we still have a couple hours before we have to leave, right?” I ask her.

“Yes, but I need to get this perfect, so this’ll give me plenty of time,” she says to me. She sits in a chair in front of the dresser where a large mirror hangs up on the wall. The lighting would probably be better in the bathroom, but here she’s able to spread out the assortment of makeup we bought yesterday. Eyeshadows, lipsticks mascaras, foundations, powders. . . . and those are only the ones I can readily identify. It’s clear that this eleven-year-old girl has far more experience than I do when it comes to dealing with makeup. I suppose that’s the Capitol way.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” I tell her as I watch her arrange the palettes of color before she begins her work. “Just as long as it’s not unsightly.”

“I’m already unsightly,” she sighs. “But if I’m—”

“Did your mom tell you that?” I ask her before she can get her sentence out. I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly uneasy with how much makeup she ordered.

Caecilia looks at me in the reflection of the mirror. Her face, still youthful with the last vestiges of baby fat, stares back at me with a maturity far exceeding her years. She says, “Everybody can see that I’m ugly.”

I grit my teeth and try to avoid saying anything because I know that I’m about to rip into her mother if I let myself open my mouth. Instead I sit down on the trunk at the foot of her bed. She continues to study me through the reflection in the mirror.

“If they see that you’re ugly then it’s because their eyes are dysfunctional,” I finally manage to tell her.

Caecilia drops her attention to the makeup containers in front of her and doesn’t respond to that.

I hate Faustina. I hate her with everything inside me. Maybe, if I were a nicer and more accepting person, I could say that the way she treats Pitch is because she is mentally unstable and she can’t help it—but I’m not. I know that she’s just cruel. And I don’t need to see the way she interacts with her daughter to know that he’s not the only one who feels the brunt of her malevolence. I cannot leave this little girl, who just moments ago was so excited to go to the party, to sit here in her room with an array of makeup that she bought purely for the purpose of covering up her “ugly” face—a face which is beautiful in her childish sort of way.

“I can help you put on your makeup,” I say to her. “Your father’s not letting you out of the house with anything too heavy, so I don’t want you to have to do this twice.”

Her head bobs in a small nod, but she can’t tear herself away from the containers. I find the chair from the bathroom and drag it into the bedroom so that I can sit next to her. I’m really hoping that she can pull off the makeup application thing herself because I’m barely able to do my own, and certainly not to the same standards as Capitolites.

“Okay, so your dress is light blue, so I recommend this color,” I say as I point towards a palette. The only thing that will save me here is that I’ve had to listen to stylists and prep teams babble about useless things like makeup and matching with outfits and which ones look best with different skin tones, eye shapes, eye colors, etc. Not that I remember it all, but at least I’ll be able to pretend that I know what I’m doing, and then Caecilia will do the rest.

And she does. I give her minimal suggestions, and she goes away with it from there. I’m impressed by how quickly she assess the colors in front of her and can pull together a coherent “look.” When I tell her that she doesn’t need to have bright eyeshadow because it’ll clash with her dress, she puts down whatever she has in her hand and chooses something else which she then expertly applies to her face. The end result is well done, though a bit much for an eleven-year-old child. Still, it’s not _terrible_ , and it doesn’t make her look like a freak, so that’s something.

After she puts on makeup, she tells me that she has to find accessories. I stay where I am in my chair as she flits about the room and pulls together whatever she thinks goes with her outfit. Mostly jewelry. Pitch didn’t buy her anything too expensive, but nothing looks cheap. It takes her a few tries before she decides on a small tiara, a bracelet that wraps around her wrist, and a vest that almost clashes with her dress.

More thought has gone into this outfit than has cumulatively gone into anything I’ve willingly worn since I’ve come to the Capitol. But I just tell her that she looks nice and excuse myself to go get ready.

“Whatever you do, don’t critique her outfit or her makeup,” I tell Pitch as he adjusts the collar of his shirt in the bathroom mirror.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Is it bad?”

“No, but a lot of effort went into it,” I say. I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth that this little girl has been critiqued and insulted to the point that she thinks she’s hideous; it’s not like he doesn’t know that Faustina is a nutcase, but telling him how shitty she treats her daughter will only make things rougher for him.

I only have a few minutes to put together my own outfit, but that won’t be a problem. I close Pitch in the bathroom so that I can pull on a dress in the bedroom, and once that’s done, I shove my way next to him as he combs a few stray hairs into place so that I can put on my own makeup—very minimal compared to what Caecilia wears.

At long last, we are presentable enough to show up to another Capitol murder party. Elm has sobered up—or at least cleaned up enough that one might overlook his inebriation—so that he, too, is presentable. So the four of us head downstairs, hail a taxi that can hold us all, and head to the party.

It’s been two weeks since the Hunger Games began, and the three remaining tributes are within a kilometer or so of each other. None of them look terrible. The District 4 pair have a couple mild burns from their encounter with the lava-snake muttation, but it’s nothing that will hold them back. Surely they are getting antsy that this is the end. To them in the arena, it’s not clear that the finale is about to begin, but certainly they must now that the end is nigh.

The party is crowded, and the moment we arrive, Elm breaks away to head towards some “people he knows” which is probably just the bar that’s been set up in this random person’s mansion. Pitch has given Caecilia strict instructions to stay with us, no matter how tempting it is to wander off and look at something. “These parties can be pretty crowded, and sometimes people get drunk and do stupid things,” he had told her. She only nodded and promised that she would stay right by our sides.

She nearly clings to me as we walk through the party. People envelope us. Sometimes they stop to say hello, and they just gasp in excitement when they see Caecilia. They’ve never seen either Pitch or me with a child, and immediately everyone wants to know who she is and how she’s related to us. Some people guess that she might be my little sister (clearly having forgotten that I’m an only child) and others identify within seconds that she’s related to Pitch.

“Who is this?!” one woman exclaims. She towers over Caecilia but leans down into her space anyhow. Caecilia, to her credit, holds her ground pretty well and doesn’t shrink away as I feel like doing.

“This is my daughter, Caecilia,” Pitch says. He stands up straight and accepts the attention people give him because of this new child. Nothing in what he says or does indicates that this girl’s mere existence brings him an onslaught of painful memories and thoughts. To your Capitol onlooker, he might as well have had this child with him for years.

The woman beams at Caecilia. “You have your father’s eyes,” she says eagerly as though she can’t get enough of this cute kid and is about to gobble her up. I don’t like how she treats her like an accessory of Pitch and not a little girl.

“You’re going to hear that a lot,” I whisper to Caecilia once the woman is out of earshot. “They love to state the obvious.”

She smiles at me, but then is drawn to the party-goers around us. She watches the great crowds of people mill about. Voices rise and fall in conversation. Brightly-colored outfits compete with each other, none of them truly standing out when each one is as elaborate or ridiculous as the next. It’s hard not to stare at them all, and I don’t bother trying to tell Caecilia to focus on where she’s going but instead lead her without assuming she’s keeping an eye on Pitch and me.

Pitch finds us a relatively quiet couch to sit on, and Caecilia takes the spot in between us. Under normal circumstances, I’d want to sit as close to Pitch as I can, but I find that I really don’t care that much right now. My attention is not on the screens but on Caecilia. She pulls out a book from her purse (a nice little trick I taught her) and begins to read. The screens show the tributes wandering around, so there’s nothing that “interesting” to watch anyhow. Still, with nothing really to do until the final battle starts, I end up staring at the screens and spacing out.

Avoxes come by and offer us drinks. We ask for non-alcoholic and motion to Caecilia like she’s the reason that we don’t want alcohol. I’ve had my fun experience getting drunk last night, and I don’t want to relive that, especially not at a party with a bunch of people I hate. The avox returns with sodas for us, which we gladly accept.

“You thank the avoxes?” Caecilia asks me as I pop open the tab on the soda.

I look at her. “Of course,” I say.

“Mom always says that they deserve to be where they are and the fact that they’re not killed is thanks enough,” the girl says matter-of-factly.

Pitch clears his throat. “We disagree with her on that,” he says to her. “They may be avoxes as a punishment for their crimes, but they still deserve basic courtesies.”

Caecilia’s brows furrow as she thinks it over, but then she just opens the tab on her soda and goes back to her book.

Pitch and I exchange a look over her head. Of course not everyone treats avoxes with respect, but neither Pitch nor I ever thought twice about thanking them for bringing items whether we requested them or not. To think that this kid—and probably many kids like her—are being raised with the idea that avoxes don’t even deserve to be spoken to with kindness is just beyond us.

I think that maybe we’ll get through this party okay when suddenly the eight-year-old bloodthirsty terror, Neptune, appears in front of us. It’s been only two weeks since we first met her, and though it’s seemed like a lifetime has passed between then and now, it’s hard to forget a kid like her.

“Hello,” she says to us with a smile. “Nice to see you again.”

But her eyes go to Caecilia. She cocks her head and watches the older girl read her book until Caecilia realizes that there is someone else here and looks up from the pages of her novel.

Pitch takes a deep breath and says, “Neptune, this is Caecilia, my daughter. Caecilia, this is Neptune, who we met her a couple weeks ago at a party.”

Caecilia studies the girl for a few seconds before she smiles and says, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Neptune responds. Then she looks up at Pitch and me. Today she wears a bright rainbow-colored dress, and her face is painted with rainbow eyeshadow and plenty of sparkles. “Who are you betting on?”

“Nobody,” Pitch says. “We are victors and aren’t allowed to bet.”

“That’s probably for the best because if you were putting money on Cove or Marlin, you’d really be in trouble,” she says. “Europa’s going to win.”

“That’s quite possible,” Pitch answers. “But there are always surprises in the Hunger Games.” I wonder if he’s afraid that the little girl will get too attached to Europa and be heartbroken when her favorite loses. I, on the other hand, say that it would teach her a lesson—though of course I don’t wish death upon any of the tributes and would hate to see somebody die just to show this kid that the Hunger Games aren’t fair.

“I told you that she’s the best,” Neptune brags. “She’s going to smash both their heads in!”

I’d be disgusted if this wasn’t so damned repetitive. But everything seems to be a replay right now: violent event after violent event, everything reworked and rehashed and all of it glamorized.

The little girl then asks Caecilia, “Who’s your favorite?”

“I don’t have a favorite,” Caecilia answers.

“Why not?” Neptune asks.

Caecilia shrugs. “I just like watching without a favorite,” she answers.

Neptune sighs dramatically. “How _boring_ ,” she replies, then she seems to lose interest in Caecilia altogether. At least until Demeter of District 11 comes over and asks if she can borrow Pitch for a minute to settle a debate they’re having. I promise Pitch that I’ll keep an eye on things over here, and he reluctantly leaves Caecilia and me. Then Neptune looks at her and asks, “Is he really your dad?”

“Yes,” Caecilia says.

“Since when?” Neptune demands.

“Since I was born,” Caecilia responds.

Neptune rolls her eyes but sits down in Pitch’s spot.

“I can’t believe your dad is a victor!” Neptune says eagerly. She seems bound and determined to tear Caecilia away from her book.

Caecilia must realize that she’s not going to be reading much with Neptune around and closes the book on her lap.

“Me neither,” Caecilia answers. “Is your dad a victor?”

“No,” Neptune answers. “He’s just boring. I wish my dad was a victor. Maybe he could use a mace like Europa.”

The two of them chat back and forth a little, but Neptune is far too eager for the party. I can’t tell if Caecilia is enjoying herself even as she talks pleasantly enough with the little girl. _Neither of them should be here,_ I think. Hunger Games aside, there’s far too many people here who don’t know how to behave in front of children. I watch one woman, her boobs pretty much hanging out of her dress, slowly massage the lower back of the man standing next to her, her hand moving lower and lower. Both of them are engaged in conversation with a third person, and neither seem to know or care that fifteen feet away are the curious eyes of two kids who, for the time being, are wrapped up in their own conversation. This is but one example of what’s happening in the world around us. I could find a dozen more if I cared to look, but I think I’d rather watch the tributes on television because the stead tromp through the arena is far more mundane.

When Pitch returns, Neptune jumps up and skitters away, disappearing into the party. Pitch doesn’t say anything about the debate he helped settle, and I don’t say anything about the devil child. He settles into the seat and the three of us wait for the finale to begin.


	56. Chapter 56

The 142nd Hunger Games is in its final few minutes. The tributes seem to smell each other out, and they draw closer to each other. Slowly people at the party begin to congregate to televisions, including our very own. There’s not much room on the couch with the three of us sitting here, but somebody sits down on the armrest next to me like it’s not a big deal that not only is he invading my personal space but he’s doing so with his ass.

People chatter about how exciting this Hunger Games has been, and even if things going on on-screen haven’t always been super enthralling, the arena itself is gorgeous. Lush jungles and dramatic landscapes, all shaped by the bubbling lava. . . . No one’s seen an arena quite like it.

“I can’t wait until they make it a destination,” says one woman. “I will be the first one on the train to go out there.”

I hope the train crashes and she dies in the fiery wreckage.

The television now shows that the tributes are within 50 meters of each other. The District 1 girl stands out in the open on the plain that has been formed by layers and layers of hardened lava. Small bits of grass grow in cracks and crannies, but otherwise it’s a barren landscape. The District 4 pair bursts out of the jungle and find themselves face-to-face with the District 1 girl.

Everybody in the party falls into a hush. People turn some of the speakers up louder to make sure we don’t miss a single sound.

“Two verse one,” says the District 4 girl, Cove. She smirks at the District 1 girl, Europa; uneven battles rarely go in the favor of the side with fewer numbers. “Would you like to take us on one at a time?”

Europa pauses to sweep back her thick blond hair into a ponytail. In doing so, she shows off the mace harnessed to her side. Of course they know it’s her weapon, but there’s nothing quite as dramatic as displaying it to her enemies before she challenges them to a fight.

When she lowers her hands, she casually rests one of them on the weapon.

“I think that the three of us have made it this far,” she says to them. “It would be a shame to take turns during the final battle.”

The District 4 boy, Marlin, snorts. “So you’re going to take on two of us at once?” he asks.

As an answer, Europa unclasps the mace from her side and pulls it free from its restraints. She swings it around in her hand easily enough and stares the two of them down.

“Unless you don’t think you’re deserving of the title of victor,” she says. “In which case you can sit out and I’ll kill you later.”

Cove readies her trident and net. Marlin adjusts his hands on the spear. Both of them have longer-reach weapons, but Europa will be forced to move in close to them in order to engage in battle. That will put her directly in their path.

The District 4 tributes move in closer, their weapons ready. Europa holds her ground. Marlin makes the first move, which Europa immediately dodges and follows up with her own attack that knocks the spear right from his hands. This gives Cove an opportunity to jump in, but Europa uses the momentum from the swing to spin around and kick her in the face. Cove staggers backwards as blood flows from her nose.

Marlin grabs up his spear and stabs it at Europa. Europa once again dodges. He stabs again, and she blocks it with her mace. Cove manages to regain her composure, and she thrusts the trident at her opponent which misses Europa, but just barely.

Europa makes this all look so easy. Cove and Marlin, on the other hand, struggle to get a good hit in on her. Even between the two of them, they can’t figure out how to get Europa to lower her guard enough for a good strike. They have knives on them, but neither will risk getting within range of Europa’s heavy weapon. The best chance they have would be to disarm her.

Marlin almost manages to do this. He stabs at her arm with his spear, but Europa drops her mace before his weapon can pierce her arm, punches him in the face while he draws back his spear, and then grabs the mace up again in the split second that he stands there stunned.

Cove spins her net and throws it at Europa. It catches the District 1 girl, and the weights on it nearly knock her off balance. Even though it doesn’t take her off her feet, it provides Cove enough time to move in with her trident. She thrusts out, and the weapon stabs Europa in the shoulder. Europa cries out, but it turns from a cry of pain into a battle call as she swings her mace and clobbers Cove in the side. Marlin moves in as his district partner collapses to the ground, but Europa throws the net off herself and dodges his attack. Blood pours out of her shoulder and down her arm from the trident wound, but she was fortunate that it was her non-dominant hand.

Somehow Cove manages to get to her feet despite the traumatic injury and she thrusts the trident once more. Europa blocks her weakened blow easily and turns around in time to dodge Marlin’s next attack. Cove staggers backwards, barely able to hold herself up, but she manages to keep from falling down. She pauses to gasp for breath as Marlin sends a series of attacks right at Europa. A thrust of the spear catches Europa’s side, and she yelps as cloth and flesh tear away from her body, but then she’s swinging her weapon again, and this time it collides with Marlin’s arm with a great crush of bone. He screams and drops his spear, but he’s not out of the running because he snatches up his knife now, and he’s not going to go down without a good fight.

He’s quicker with the knife. He’s able to dodge Europa’s swings, threatening to dance forward and plunge the knife into her at any moment. He takes a couple good attempts, but Europa, despite her injuries, moves away from each one.

Cove sneaks up behind her. The District 4 girl can barely breathe, and she wobbles on her feet, but she thrusts the trident into Europa’s back in what can only be the last of her energy. Europa staggers forward, the weapon still lodged in her. Cove grabs onto the end of the trident and pulls it out, but Europa already turns around on her heel and smashes the mace into Cove’s head. Cove falls to the ground, and a cannon fires above.

Europa doesn’t have a break before Marlin moves in. His knife sinks into her ribs, and she gasps for breath. Excitement glitters in Marlin’s eyes but before he can even think about victory, Europa pushes him away and swings her mace once more. Marlin watches, stunned, as the weapon falls down upon him before it collides with his head and shatters his skull.

The cannon fires for the final time.

Europa gasps for breath and clutches her side, but the mace remains in her hand. Blood and brains splatter her face and clothing. Pain twists her features with each breath she takes. But then comes the announcement she has longed to hear, and she forces herself to stand upright, ignore the pain, and greet it with composure:

_“I am proud to present the victor of the 142 nd Hunger Games, Europa Vitner of District 1!”_

The District 1 girl, battered and bloodied and dying, smiles.

Screams and shouts of excitement erupt through the party, and somewhere in the distance I hear the piercing cry that can only belong to an eight-year-old girl who just watched her hero succeed in her quest for glory.

Honestly, I don’t care.

Pitch lets out a breath and then turns to Caecilia. “How’re you holding up?” he asks her.

She smiles at him. “That was fun,” she says. “I can’t believe that she fought _two_ tributes.”

I sit back in my spot on the couch and breathe evenly. The people around us begin to shift and move and congratulate each other and speculate on how the hell the District 1 girl could have pulled off a fight like that against training scores of 9 and 10. I sip my soda and tell myself that the party will end soon enough and we can go back to the apartment. . . .

Where, of course, we’ll still have a great many problems to deal with.

“It’ll be fine,” Pitch tells me. He reaches out and touches my cheek briefly. I give him a half-hearted smile which he returns.

Somebody I don’t recognize walks over to us and asks us if he can speak with Pitch. Pitch says that that’s fine, and he once more disappears, leaving me with Caecilia and the promise that he’ll be right back. The girl no longer bothers trying to read her book because she’s too busy watching the recaps on the television screen replaying not just the events of the final fight but also other important moments for the District 1 girl. She can barely sit in her seat as her body thrums with excitement.

“She killed eight tributes,” Caecilia says as the announcers begin discussing something we can’t hear due to all the chaos. Still, the diagram on the screen shows Europa in the center and the eight tributes she killed in little circles surrounding her. “That _must_ be a record, right?”

“I actually don’t know what the record is,” I tell her.

“Why not?” she asks as she turns to me. Her curious eyes search my face. “You’re a victor—don’t you keep track of that stuff?”

“Maybe some victors do, but not me,” I say. She still looks at me curiously, but I can’t really explain that I hate the Hunger Games because I’m also supposed to be a representative of the system. So she’ll go on with life thinking that myself and Pitch and the other victors really enjoy the Hunger Games and mentoring and all those other things.

Neptune comes back around now and sits down on the ground at an angle so that she can see the screen and turn to talk to us.

“I hope I get to meet her,” Neptune says with a sigh. Tear tracks cut through the glittery powder on her cheeks, and it’s clear that she’s been crying with happiness at the District 1 girl’s success. “She’s _so pretty_.”

“She’s really strong,” Caecilia comments. “I want to try her weapon. It must be super heavy.”

Neptune sighs again, this time louder. “I bet she’s even prettier in real life,” she says. “And I loved how she just smashed everyone with her mace. Did you know that it’s a mace and not a morning star because a morning star has spikes on it?”

“Yes, I was aware of the difference,” I say dryly, wondering how I got stuck with babysitting duties for this random kid. Do her parents not give a crap that she’s wandering around an adult party bothering other people? They’re probably drunk as hell, I suppose, and taking care of their own kid is not their responsibility when they have more important things to worry about. “Don’t you think your parents are missing you? Maybe you should go find them.”

The little girl only shrugs. “They’re talking,” she says. “Boring.”

The party grows louder by the moment. Isolde must be here somewhere because I hear a group of people howling with excitement and pouring compliments to someone. The music seems to grow louder, too, but that might just be because this entire event is so overwhelming that I can barely stand it anymore. Recaps play on the television in front of us, and they now show every death in sequential order. When they get to Sage’s decapitation, I can’t stand it anymore.

“C’mon, Caecilia, let’s go find Pitch,” I say to her. Caecilia nods and climbs to her feet.

“I know where he is,” Neptune brags. She stands up and says, “Follow me.”

This girl is so damned annoying that were the circumstances any different—if I weren’t so overloaded with sounds and sights and smells—then I might have told her to get lost and I’d find Pitch on my own. But instead I follow the kid through the crowd, holding Caecilia’s hand to make sure that she doesn’t get left behind. Caecilia doesn’t protest, even when I accidentally pinch her fingers too hard and pull her roughly to avoid an intoxicated woman staggering in our direction. Neptune leads us down a hallway and then another, and finally we come to a quieter part of the mansion. We stop in the doorway of a small room.

Pitch stands there with a man and a woman. None of them see the three of us at the door, but they converse in hushed whispers. I don’t recognize the other two people, but I know it can’t be good. Pitch stands with his arms across his chest and his brow furrowed in concern as he talks quickly and quietly to the other two. I guide Caecilia back into the hallway to wait for him; if it were just me, I wouldn’t give a shit and would get myself involved, but something about the way they huddle there concerns me.

Neptune gets bored of waiting after a few minutes of talking with us about Europa and the glory of District 1. She tells us that we’re as boring as her parents and disappears with the promise that she’ll be right back with some food. But any moment away from that child is a great relief.

Caecilia and I lean against the wall and pace back and forth and overall try not to look like we’re bored. There’s precious little for us to talk about, but I manage to get a few sentences out of her by asking about the book she’s reading. She pulls it out of her purse and summarizes the plot in a few concise words. People pass us by, but few actually look at us. Those who do just give us pleasant smiles as they hurry along with their friends.

But then a woman stops us, and who is it but the dreaded witch Martha. I draw in a deep breath as she looks at me with a kind—but dangerously false—smile. Behind her is an avox who looks dead ahead without looking at Caecilia or me; she clasps the train of her master’s robe to keep it from dragging on the ground.

“It’s so wonderful to see you here, Juniper,” she says to me. She puts an arm around me in a hug, and I have no choice but to go along with it. “And who is this—oh, lovely girl, you have his eyes.”

Caecilia smiles at her but Martha already has her attention right back on me. She pulls me away from Caecilia for a few steps as though that will give us some privacy.

“I am so happy for you and Pitch,” she says. Her breath reeks of alcohol, but I know that she is just as alert and sober as ever and that I can’t think for even a second that she is in any way intoxicated. “But I want you to understand that he will never fully be yours.”

“I understand,” I agree, forcing the words out of my leaden mouth.

“He has already disappointed me once, and you saw what happened,” she continues in a low voice, her eyes locked onto mine. I don’t have to answer because she knows, I’m sure, in the panicked look that crosses my face that I’m very aware of what she is capable of. After drinking in my fear for several long seconds, she leans in and kisses me on the lips. I very nearly step away from her, except that her hand has dropped to my waist and moves towards my butt. When she releases me, she whispers, “There will be no second chances.”

I nod, but the taste of whatever sweet alcohol she was drinking lingers on my lips like saccharine poison, and I know that she’s quite correct that there will not be any way to escape whatever she plans for Pitch in the future. She has been “gracious” enough to allow him to marry me, and that’s the extent of her generosity. She pats me on the cheek, her long red nails brushing against my skin with just enough of a sharp edge to remind me that nothing about this woman, no matter how friendly she appears to be, is not dangerous.

She leaves without another word, and I fall back against the wall as I watch her retreating frame walk down the hallway, avox in tow.

For a few seconds, I forget that I’m in a lively party celebrating the end of the Hunger Games—instead I exist in a black hole where time and space have no meaning and there is no end to the fear within me. I nearly crumple to the ground but somehow manage to stay on my feet and stay present enough to not dissolve into nothing. At last the sounds of the party return, and I take a deep breath.

“Juniper?” Caecilia asks.

I jerk around having forgotten that she was there. She remains in the same place she had been when Martha approached. But concern is etched on her brow, and she watches me intently.

“I’m fine,” I say even though she hadn’t asked. I clear my throat, straighten myself up, and walk back to her. “Just an old friend.”

She doesn’t say anything else on this matter, and we go back to waiting for Pitch. But the atmosphere of the party has changed. Where I was relatively indifferent to the madness despite my revulsion at the whole affair, I can’t stop the bolts of terror that shoot through my brain and down along my spine.

That was a warning. But why?

When Pitch finally emerges from the room, he looks frazzled. His eyes dart around when he sees us, as though he’s afraid we might have been eavesdropping. But I just reach out and take his hand, and it seems to lighten him up enough that he’s able to tell us that it’s time to leave. Neither of us speak as we head towards the door. He keeps a hand on Caecilia’s shoulder to keep her from getting lost or wandering away or whatever he’s afraid of, and then we head outside into the bright sunlight.

I forgot it was day.

“Let’s go to the park,” Pitch suggests as we watch a cab slow down and pull up in front of us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That awkward moment when you realize that you almost had your character kill off too many tributes.


	57. Chapter 57

We stop at a vendor near the park and buy lunch for the three of us. Caecilia seems to think that this is the best thing that could happen today, and she won’t stop talking about how wonderful it is to purchase food from a complete stranger with a rolling cart and how even more wonderful it is to have a picnic. This really makes me question her lifestyle, but I keep any comments or inquiries to myself and lead the two of them toward a particularly nice tree that offers shade from the summer sun.

The three of us sit down (though Pitch has to use the plastic bag the meals came in to lay down on the ground for Caecilia to sit on because the idea of dirtying her dress distresses her), and then we start in on our meal.

“What did you think?” Pitch asks Caecilia as he unwraps his sandwich.

She smiles at him. “That was the best party I’ve ever been to,” she gushes. “There were so many people, and it was so exciting, and I just can’t believe that Europa killed Marlin and Cove like that!”

Sickening. I scoop salad in my mouth.

Pitch tries to smile at her because she’s so excited about the experience, but it doesn’t quite stick before it falls back off. We just watched two teenagers get murdered by a third, and that third teenager is now a national hero for this absolutely baseless violence she committed. And his daughter is so brainwashed by the society that promotes this that she sees the event as a great affair to be celebrated. Only eleven years old, and she can't stop grinning that she had the chance to go to this party and _be there_ when the mace smashed the District 4 boy’s brains out of his head.

But then again, he asked for her opinion, didn’t he?

“Do you guys get to meet her?” she asks. Her food sits abandoned in front of her.

“Oh, I suppose we will next year,” he answers. “Eat your sandwich.”

“You have to wait a whole year?” She picks up the sandwich in her hands but doesn’t eat.

“Of course we could meet her sooner, but she will have parties and interviews in the near future,” Pitch says to her. “And then she’ll want to go home and celebrate with her family.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Caecilia answers. She doesn’t seem to like that answer, but she’s learning the ropes of what it means to be the daughter of a victor. Things aren’t always as convenient as the television makes it seem; we might “get” to go to big parties and celebrate the Hunger Games, but even we have to wait to meet the newest victors. She nibbles on the end of her sandwich.

As she eats, Caecilia chatters about her favorite parts of the Hunger Games, and that she’s really excited to see what happens next year because each arena is different and all the tributes are different and on and on. Pitch lets her talk and I try to eat my food without thinking. The girl has a pretty sizeable knowledge of the past few Hunger Games, and it seems like she’s memorized a bunch of useless information about victors over the years.

“Nobody will believe me when I say that my father is a victor,” she says wistfully.

“Do you really care what they think?” I ask her as I set my fork down in my bowl. “You know that he’s your father, and that’s good enough.”

Caecilia frowns at this but doesn’t answer.

“Juniper, were you ever in junior high?” Pitch asks me with amusement. “Or did you somehow manage to avoid that terrible part of life?”

I shrug. I’ll give him that viewing preteen popularity issues as an adult is vastly different than being a kid yourself and having to struggle with the social hierarchy. But the point remains: she doesn’t have to listen to the crap the other kids give her if they don’t think she’s telling the truth.

“Are there more parties?” Caecilia asks hopefully.

“I don’t know,” he answers. He looks up from the sandwich and studies her. “And I’m not sure when your mom is coming to pick you up.”

Her shoulders slump. I know that she’s upset about returning to her mom, probably more than missing out on another party. The idea of sending her back to that woman makes me angry, but I shove another forkful of salad in my mouth to refrain from commenting on it.

“But you got to go to one party, and you enjoyed it, right,” Pitch says, trying to cheer her up. “There were a lot of people to see with weird outfits.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Caecilia concedes. “But I think you don’t know much about fashion if you think that’s weird.”

This gets a good chuckle out of Pitch. “No, I guess I don’t,” he says. “I have much to learn, I suppose.”

“Except the lady with the avox who was carrying her robe—that was weird. Who was she, anyway?” she asks me. “Not Neptune, but the one who came after she left? The one who kissed you?”

Pitch raises his eyebrows at me.

“Oh, yeah, that was Martha,” I say like it wasn’t a big deal. But my stomach clenches and I have to once more put down my fork. “Strange taste in greetings.”

Caecilia laughs at that, which provides a bit of relief that maybe she didn’t pick up the sheer panic that went through me at the time, nor the uneasiness that makes me shift around in my seat right now. I ball up my trash and look around for the plastic bag before I remember that Caecilia is sitting on it. Pitch doesn’t take his eyes off me, but his attention is drawn to the movement of the wrappers in my hands.

“Would you throw out the trash for us, Caecilia?” Pitch asks as he scans around and points toward a garbage can closer to one of the asphalt paths that wanders throughout the park. _Convenient timing,_ I think, and I know that Pitch is going to grill me about Martha.

I wonder if Caecilia has ever been asked to do such a task in her life if she has avoxes at her disposal, but after a brief annoyed pause, she reaches out and takes the trash from us.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Pitch hisses, “What the hell happened with Martha?”

“She just came over and started warning me and stuff,” I say. “Besides, where the hell were you? You just vanished and started talking with some strangers.”

“I was—” but he stops midsentence to watch Caecilia. A boy comes up to her as she dumps the garbage in the bin and starts talking to her and gesturing out towards a field where several other kids have gathered. Caecilia shakes her head and says something to him. Immediately anger flashes in me and I have to tell myself that I’m not going to beat up a ten-year-old kid for saying something rude to Caecilia, no matter what it was.

“Everything okay?” Pitch asks as Caecilia returns and sits back down on her plastic bag.

She nods. “Yep,” she says.

“What did that boy want?” he asks casually.

“Oh, he just wanted me to join them in kickball,” she answers. “Don’t worry, I told him no.” But despite her words, she throws a glance in the general direction of the boy where he’s saying something to the other children on the field. They appear to be choosing teams, or dividing into positions. One of them has a soccer ball tucked underneath her arm.

Pitch frowns. “Caecilia, you can go play with them,” he says.

Now she frowns right back at him. “But I’ll get my dress all dirty,” she says.

“I think we can make an excuse this one time,” he says. “You’ve been cooped up inside the past couple days. Go.”

Caecilia stares at him for a second until he gestures for her to leave, and the briefest smile flicks across her face before she jumps to her feet and begins to run. Pitch watches to make sure she gets to the field okay and that the other kids accept her before he turns back to me.

“Martha,” he says.

I swallow. “She pretty much came out of nowhere, told me that you’ll never be entirely mine, threatened me, and kissed me,” I say. “All in about thirty seconds. Then she left.”

“Threatened you? About what?” he asks.

“She just told me that you disappointed her once and that there wouldn’t be second chances,” I say. “Nothing we don’t already know—I think she just wanted to intimidate me.” Which really worked, I should add. But I don’t because it doesn’t matter.

Pitch shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you,” he tells me.

“Oh, give me a break,” I say. “Now where did _you_ go and why?”

He hesitates now and looks around. Aside from people like Caecilia’s little kickball group who are absorbed in their own games, there isn’t anyone close to us. Still, he moves closer to me so that we’re sitting side by side. This gives him a better view of the field, but also, of course, allows him to speak more quietly to me.

“You know Neptune. . . .” he starts.

“Oh dear God, if she’s your child, I actually may want to call off the wedding,” I tell him before I can stop myself. He closes his eyes and looks like he’s trying to restrain himself, so I mutter, “Sorry. I’ll still marry you. Go on.”

“It’s not her, it’s her older brother,” he says. “We saw him the other day, very briefly, but we weren’t introduced.”

Already I’m dreading the thought of family reunions knowing that they’d involve that terrible girl, but I push them back so that I can focus on Pitch.

“The woman, Tatiana, did not tell her husband about our relationship because it wasn’t quite . . . approved by him and they were married at the time. He did not realize that I was her son’s father until she let it slip to him at the party,” he says. “This entire time, he thought that it was his kid. . . . Needless to say, he’s pretty pissed off.”

“I guess being mad about adultery makes sense,” I say.

“He’s threatening to make it public,” Pitch adds.

“Okay, never mind,” I say quickly. Then, after a few seconds, I ask, “He’s willing to rip apart his family in order to punish you?”

“Not just me, but also Tatiana,” he says. “He’s furious at her. He might just be angry now and will calm down once the alcohol wears off and be more reasonable, but yes. . . . They have two children and he’s willing to throw the older one out to the wolves because he’s angry at his wife and me. And he does not care that it will affect the other child as well.”

Now I kind of feel sorry for Neptune and her older brother.

“What is _wrong_ with people?” I demand to no one in particular.

Pitch takes my hand and holds it in both of his. I know that there’s no use complaining, or making a big deal of the injustice of it all, but I wish I could regardless. To get my mind off of the anger, I focus on his thumb rubbing the palm of my hand. No matter how angry I get, no matter how upset I am, he’s always there with me to help keep me calm. And though I’ve gotten better at controlling my anger in the past year, the last few weeks have been trying; one problem after another after another. None of it would have happened if Pitch and I hadn’t decided that we’d get married. I’d still be angry at one thing or another I’m sure, and Pitch would still be trying to help me, but at least we wouldn’t be in this emotional endurance race.

“Is this still worth getting married?” I find myself asking.

His thumb stops moving, and he clasps my hand tightly behind his.

“Absolutely,” he says.

I didn’t expect that response, but he stares at me intently and doesn’t avert his gaze.

“When you first suggested we should get married, I didn’t know what to think,” he says. “I’m older than you, I have people to entertain in the Capitol, we wanted to be just friends. But I wanted to make a decision that wasn’t pre-arranged by somebody in the Capitol. If you had told me at the time what would happen to us—to the people around us—because we made this decision, I would have said that it wasn’t worth it. But I know it was. Because it’s _our_ decision. All the other things that have happened, those are the decisions made by other people who are pissed off that we have a few moments of happiness. But those aren’t our choices or our actions. We can only do what we can in order to keep moving on track with our decision.

“And Juniper, I have never met anyone like you. With all the shit that’s happened over the past couple weeks, you have never wavered. I know that you like me—though I can’t say in what way—and I know that you’re angry at what’s happening to us and that’s propelling you forward with the engagement, but in all the relationships I’ve ever had, I’ve never been with somebody who cares so fiercely about me that she would be willing to deal with even half of what we’re going through. I . . . I love you, and I hope that when all of this is behind us, you aren’t unhappy with your decision to marry me.”

Welp.

Pitch’s hands still hold mine, and he waits for my reaction. My heart thumps at his unexpectedly honest assessment of the situation. I know that this speech wasn’t something made lightly; he doesn’t lie to me, but he also doesn’t part easily with words that he knows I might not be able to handle. The fact that he loves me. . . .

I don’t even know what to think about that.

Because I care for Pitch deeply and I enjoy being with him, but I can’t return his confession of love. Yet what he says doesn’t scare me, either; if I had known when I left District 7 that Pitch would be telling me that he loved me by the time the Hunger Games concluded, I’d have stayed behind because the idea would have freaked me out. But it doesn’t now. I guess I had known that his affection for me went beyond that of friendship, even a weirdly unusual friendship like ours, and I suppose some unconscious part of my brain must’ve understood that his “interest” in me was more than just fondness.

For a few seconds, I can’t respond. I take a deep breath.

“You’re right that I do like you . . . but I can’t say that I love you, at least not like that,” I say carefully. I keep my words as steady as I can. “I hope that . . . isn’t a problem.”

He nods. “I know,” he says. “I’m okay with that.”

“But I won’t be unhappy, I promise,” I tell him. _I’m never unhappy with you,_ I want to say, but the words stick in my mouth. This isn’t the sort of conversation I’m used to having, and trying to express what I feel remains a struggle even to myself. I’m not sure I even know what I feel anyhow.

He squeezes my hand.

We stay here under the tree and watch Caecilia play kickball with the group of kids. On occasion, their shouts and laughter float over to us. It’s surreal. These could be kids back in District 7, just messing around on a summer afternoon. I will never ceased to be amazed how similar Capitol residents are to us in moments like this when they’re not enveloped in murderous pastimes. But at least Caecilia is getting exercise. I don’t know what the days ahead of us have in store, but picnicking in the park and playing kickball will likely not be high on the list of things to do.

I glance at Pitch sitting next to me. He stares off in the distance, watching Caecilia laugh and run around with a bunch of kids she didn’t know until a few minutes ago. Despite that it’s only a matter of time—minutes, hours, days?—before everything will change once again, he is calm. In this one moment, he is content. I wonder if this is how he gets by in the Capitol, year after year after year—finding those few moments in the day in which he can be fully content with what’s happening around him, even if it’s completely mundane compared to the horrors he lives through on a daily basis.

He catches me staring at him and puts his arm around me with a smile. I lean into him and rest my head against his shoulder.


	58. Chapter 58

Joule of District 3 calls Pitch in the afternoon to update him about the information she’s found. He excuses himself to take the call in the bedroom, and I sit with Caecilia in the sitting room where we each read our books. I don’t make much progress as I wait for Pitch to return.

“Juniper,” Pitch says when he emerges from the bedroom. He lingers in the hall and I stand up and follow him back to the room. He closes the door behind us, and we sit down on the bed.

He’s restless. He’s shaking, and he’s trying to pass it off as being fidgety as he shifts around in his place. I take his hand, and immediately he stops moving around so much, but it becomes clear that he’s trembling.

“What did she say?” I prompt him when he hesitates.

“One of the women doesn’t want me in her life,” he says, which sounds like damned good news to me. But means that whatever the hell he’s about to say sure isn’t. “Joule told me that another one likely wants to meet me to discuss this. She didn’t exactly talk this over with them, but she was able to get a general sense of things.”

“Okay,” I say as I think this over. That means that we’re down to three. One we already know is a problem, but we’ve more or less addressed that. Another likely will be a problem unless the husband is more reasonable when sober. And the third still needs to be dealt with. But that’s sure as hell better than four.

He continues, “So I called her—Arial—and she wants to meet tonight.”

“Oh—that was fast.” I didn’t even realize that he had time to make a second phone call while Caecilia and I were reading. Alright, this is happening.

“She wants to meet over at her house,” he says.

But there’s something about how he said that that makes me ask, “Just you?”

“Yes,” he confirms. But I won’t let him go on his own, not when Faustina treated him so terribly. What’s to say that this other woman isn’t going to rip into him the moment she sees him? No way can Pitch deal with that by himself after everything he’s gone through.

“That’s too bad,” I say. “Because I just so happen to be going to some random woman’s house at an address I don’t happen to know yet, but will know as soon as you give it to me.”

He smiles wryly. “Of course you are,” he says. “Perhaps we’ll carpool then.”

“I’ll call Esther to see if she can watch Caecilia,” I say more seriously. “I don’t think we should leave her alone with Elm.”

“I agree,” Pitch says. “If Esther doesn’t work out, then maybe Lady or Elijah will do it.”

Lady maybe. I’m not sure how much one would have to pay Elijah to tolerate kids for very long. He doesn’t seem much like the sort of person to deal with anyone under the age of eighteen unless the government requires him to.

So I call Esther who is very excited to meet Pitch’s daughter—she confides that she heard about her this afternoon at the party—and asks if it’s okay if we drop her off at Maximus’ house. We get ready to leave and Caecilia is beside herself to meet _yet another_ victor, so she has no qualms with going over to some stranger’s house as long as it means that she gets to be in the presence of another famous person. When we pull up to Maximus’ house—a quaint little home in Capitol suburbia, of all things—Caecilia is completely smitten with the little picket fence and small bird fountain in the front yard.

“Hi guys,” Esther says as she opens the door.

Pitch introduces her to Caecilia, and the two of them just smile shyly at each other. And then Maximus appears, and she introduces him to us. He’s the same strange man from the café we went to the afternoon of the tribute parade, but he looks far less sinister in this nice little one-story home than he does eyeing Esther in the coffee shop. Not that I fully trust him, but at least it puts me at ease a little that Esther isn’t tricking herself into thinking that he isn’t an absolute creep. Maybe he is, but I can’t tell from this angle. I hesitate leaving Caecilia with this stranger, but Esther promises that they’re going to have a fun evening, and if we need to leave her longer to please just call her and let her know.

And then Pitch and I are back in the cab heading for the house of a woman who I loathe before I even know her. I hold Pitch’s hand and we ride in silence, neither of us daring to make more noise than it takes to breathe. We pass by house after house. Tens of thousands of people live in this one city alone; how many of them are aware of the lies they have been forced to live?

At last the cab pulls up in front of a large townhouse. Pitch gets out and holds the door open for me, and then we walk across the yard to the front porch. He rings the doorbell, and we stand there calmly as we can manage. I know I’m not invited, and I know that this might set the woman off; I can’t allow myself to relax even when Pitch briefly puts his hand on my shoulder and tells me that I’m too tense. His hand drops away when we see motion in the window next to the door.

When the door opens, a woman of about Pitch’s age stands before us. She has light skin and short blondish-brown hair, but there’s something odd about her—I suddenly realize it’s because she doesn’t have the crazy makeup that I’ve gotten so used to seeing on every non-victor face in the Capitol. Aside from abnormally long eyelashes and a touch of lipstick, her face is void of the color and extravagance of a typical Capitolite. She’s at home, and she has peeled off the exterior layers, showing what appears to be a normal person beneath. Not that anybody who has done what she has can be considered normal.

Of course, she doesn’t expect me. She stands there stunned for a moment, and then Pitch says, “It’s nice to see you again, Arial.”

“Come in,” she answers, and she moves back so that the two of us can step inside.

Tall ceilings and large window panes on the walls allow plenty of light and air into this spacious entryway. Everything has been polished and dusted and nothing is out of place, not the gleaming wooden coat rack nor the photographs hanging on the wall.

Arial closes the door and leads us into a sitting room off the entryway where she beckons us to sit on the sofa.

“Can I get you anything?” she asks. “Tea? Coffee? Water?”

“No, thank you,” Pitch answers, and I shake my head.

The woman nods and settles into the armchair opposite us. Nothing about her looks at ease even within her own house; her shoulders hunch and her eyes keep running over us again and again. She studies the two of us for a second and then says, “I had . . . not expected you to be here, Juniper. Please forgive my hesitation when I saw you.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t normally go to places uninvited.”

She nods. “I had been hoping to talk with Pitch alone. . . .” she hesitates. “But I suppose since this ultimately affects the both of you. . . .”

I can’t help but wonder where this kid is, and if she’s going to thrust it upon us so that she doesn’t need to find a babysitter. I wonder how many children we’ll collect by the time all of this is said and done. She stares down at her hands where her orange and purple mismatched manicured nails are the only remnants of wild and crazy Capitol fashion.

“Pitch. I’m sorry,” she says.

Pitch doesn’t respond for a few long moments. “I don’t understand,” he finally says.

She runs a hand through her hair and sits back in her seat. She can’t look at him, and it takes a bit for her to gather together her next words. “I’m sorry for what I did to you,” she says. “I understand now how wrong it was, and I can’t expect you to forgive me, but I am so, so sorry.”

She was right that this conversation wasn’t for me, and I look around the room awkwardly as I try to pretend that maybe I’m not here. Nothing appears to be out of place, not the furniture itself nor the magazines arranged on the end table. Oh, look, there’s a pretty cool clock on the wall. And next to that is a weird candle in the shape of a mountain. That’s nice.

But it’s not enough to distract me from their conversation. _I shouldn’t have come,_ I think. _I should have stayed home with Caecilia. This woman isn’t going to attack and maim Pitch. She wanted to have an actual grown-up conversation with him._

Pitch falters as the words choke up in his throat, but he can’t get them out.

“I was old enough to know better so I know there’s no excuse,” she says. “I-I wanted people to like me, and I used you for my own personal gain. It was terrible of me to do that, and even worse of me to trick you into getting me pregnant.”

_Is that a handwoven rug? Straight from District 8? Wow, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life._

“And Garamond?” Pitch asks. His voice wavers, and he struggles to hold himself together. This wasn’t something he expected to hear, either, and the sudden turn of events has blindsided him.

Arial shakes her head. “He is at his grandparent’s right now,” she answers. “I didn’t want him to ask questions. I . . . don’t want him to meet you. He thinks that his father died when he was a baby.”

Pitch can only nod at this. It would be quite a blow to find out that your mother lied to you your entire life and that your father is truly alive. A twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid wouldn’t understand that she had done it to save face, or that she had withheld the truth to protect him. Instead he’d be angry, maybe, or hurt that his father was still alive and that they’d missed all those years together. It would effectively destroy his relationship with his mom, and then what would become of him?

Hadn’t Pitch not wanted to disturb the lives of the children? Isn’t that exactly what Arial has done for him? And yet he sits there in tense silence as though he wants to say something else.

I stare at the pattern on the rug and force myself to breathe evenly.

“Garamond is happy here,” she tells him. “He has me and his grandparents. He has many friends, and he’s top of his class in school. While I’m sure he would be honored to know that you’re his father, I’m afraid of how it would change everything for him.”

“Of course,” Pitch manages. “You’re right, of course. I don’t want his life to be upset.”

Relief softens Arial’s expression, but when she offers him a smile, there’s still tension in her lips. “I am happy for you and Juniper,” she says, and on hearing my name, I know that I’m somewhat back in this conversation. She turns her uneasy smile toward me. “I was happy to see you two together, and I hope that your marriage is joyous. And I hope . . . you don’t have to deal with too many people like me.”

She hopes that he isn’t still forced to sleep with women and men who buy him for a period of time. But just because she hopes it, just because she’s changed, doesn’t mean that things have changed for him. I clench my jaw and stare at an empty armchair underneath a lamp with a stained glass shade. She’s been able to change herself and her world— _she_ has been able to come to terms with the things she did—but Pitch will never be able to. He’s still as much enslaved to the Capitol elite as he was fifteen years ago, possibly moreso. And that, perhaps, is the most unfair truth of all.

Pitch asks her where the bathroom is, and she tells him that it is down the hall and to the right. He stands up and follows her instructions, leaving me alone with this woman.

“Juniper,” she says, and I’m forced to look at her. When I do, her guilt-ridden eyes watch me with great sadness. “You’re a good girl—a good woman. I know that you will take better care of Pitch than I did, or any of the other women who demanded his companionship against his will. He deserves somebody like you in his life.”

She probably means it as a compliment, but all I can see is that the competition is pretty shitty and _anybody_ would be better than the women who forced him into their beds. But I nod at her to indicate that I heard her, and then I keep watching the hallway to see when Pitch will emerge. To my relief, Arial doesn’t try to engage me in any further conversation, and a few minutes later, Pitch returns. He looks a little more in control of himself, and he comes back over to my side and takes a seat.

Still, nobody says anything, like the words required to exchange polite talk have vanished from our vocabularies.

“I should let you go,” she says at last. I try not to make the first move, but when it’s clear that the others are firmly rooted in place, I stand up and nudge Pitch’s shoulder. He finally manages to unglue himself from the seat, and he joins me as I walk to the door, Arial a few steps behind us.

“Thank you,” he says to her. She smiles sadly at him and opens the door for us.

Once we’re in the cab, Pitch breaks down. His chest heaves as he barely controls the sobs that wrack his body, and I direct the cabbie to drop us off at the nearest open area, which happens to be a field with a nature trail. Although one family is out flying a kite further in the field, the area is otherwise unoccupied. I guide Pitch out of the car, and then we manage to stagger along the path and further into the field. We collapse under a large oak tree and I hold him in my arms as he cries.


	59. Chapter 59

The next morning, Pitch makes plans for the three of us to go to a museum, but he’s interrupted by another phone call. He looks at the phone with heaviness before he excuses himself to the bedroom. My stomach lurches. I don’t know how much more of this he can stand. He already can’t sleep well, and I constantly wake up during the night to coax him out of his nightmares. A break, even for a day, would be a welcomed relief.

“I bet you’ve been to all the museums,” I say to Caecilia as a way to distract her. Now that the Hunger Games aren’t on, it’s harder to place her in front of the television as a means to keep her mind off the fact that Pitch keeps getting pulled away into calls and conversations.

She shakes her head. “I’ve been to a couple for school, but there are so many museums,” she says.

“Are there any that you haven’t been to that you’d like to go to?” I ask her.

She thinks about it for a moment and then starts rattling off all the places she’d like to visit. The surge of information overwhelms me, so I stop her and grab a piece of paper from the kitchen so that I can keep track. We can’t go to all of them before her mom picks her up, but if we do end up having to stay in the Capitol part time, then it would be nice to have a list of places to visit. And Caecilia is right that there are a great number of museums, but it’s a little disheartening when I ask her how many of all the museums she’s visited and she tells me only five. How do you live in a city with this many museums and you barely go to any of them?

As the list-making winds down and I set the pen to the side, I look up to see Caecilia smiling at me.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, it is,” she says. “It’s just that you’re really not anything like I expected you would be, which is nice.”

I refrain from rolling my eyes, but just barely. “So what did your mom say about me?”

She hesitates, but finally says, “She said that you’re a slut, and that you slept your way to victory, and that you don’t deserve to be a victor.”

Well I can’t say I’m surprised though I’m not really sure how one would sleep one’s way to victory. And why do people keep saying this shit about me? Is this actually something that people think just because Pitch and I are together now?

“But I think you’re a really good victor,” she adds.

“Oh, well, thanks,” I reply.

When Pitch returns from the bedroom, he pauses before he takes his seat again and says, “Change of plans.”

I call Esther and apologize profusely for asking her to watch Caecilia again, but she tells me that it’s not a problem at all and that Caecilia is a perfectly-behaved kid. Then I apologize to Caecilia and let her know that when things get straightened out, we’ll go to the museum together. Her face turns serious when she realizes that the museum trip won’t be going as planned, but she nods and says that she is fine spending time with Esther and Uncle Max.

After we drop her off, we head to yet another Capitolite’s house for yet another wonderful encounter. This one, we both know, won’t be quite as “smooth” as the visit yesterday, and there’s no need for me to worry that I’ll be out of place in a private conversation. Sure, the things that will come up will definitely be private . . . but only for a short period of time, and then all of Panem will know.

“Pitch,” I say as the cab winds through city streets. He turns and looks at me. “Whatever happens, I’m here.”

“I know,” he replies, and he gives my hand a light squeeze. I rest my head on his shoulder for the remainder of the ride.

Tatiana has good money, and it’s clear by the spacious lawn leading up to the massive home. It’s not quite a mansion, but add another few rooms and you’d have to consider it as one, I’m sure. We briefly stand on the front steps staring at the great polished wooden doors before an avox answers and welcomes us inside.

 _Great, a household that supports slavery. Certainly they’re going to be logical people,_ I think as we step through the doorway.

We’re taken into a sitting room where the avox motions us to have a seat. She bows and disappears into the house, leaving us in silence. From where we sit, we have full view of a grand staircase that leads up to the second story balcony. Off the sitting room is a hallway or perhaps another room; it’s hard to tell from the position on the couch. Pitch takes my hand and the two of us sit quietly for but a minute before the same man and woman that Pitch was talking to at the party yesterday enter the room.

“Good morning,” the woman says as she and the man sit down in the loveseat adjacent to ours. She doesn’t really give off the impression that there is anything “good” about her morning. Her face, thickly layered with grey and blue makeup, looks strained. The man next to her has a permanent scowl on his powdered face, and he stares Pitch down like everything going wrong in his world is Pitch’s fault. His wife, I’m sure, left off the fact that their relationship was not entirely consensual on Pitch’s part.

“I don’t think any of us care much for formalities right now, so let’s just get to the point,” the man says without even bothering to introduce himself. Sure, that’s fine. The sooner we get this done, the better. He sits up straight, stares directly at Pitch, and continues, “I have been lied to for the past twelve years, and I have thought that the child who bears my name is my own. But instead I have come to find out through an offhanded comment from my wife that this child is not mine but yours.”

Pitch nods. “That’s correct,” he says.

“And now everybody expects me to just _accept_ this,” he continues with indignation.

“Plinius,” the woman says. “Please. I know that it wasn’t right, but it was one night thirteen years ago.”

The man turns to her and snaps, “Look me in the eye, Tatiana, and tell me that this was just a one-night affair.”

But the woman cannot look him in the eye at all. That gives the man more than enough information. He slaps his hand on his knee. “So how long was it, Tatiana?” he demands. “If not one night, then how many?”

“Three months,” the woman responds quietly. She can’t look at her husband, or at Pitch, or even at me, as I sit here wide-eyed watching this horrible interaction between them. I tighten my grip on Pitch’s hand, and he returns the favor. I don’t think either of us know how to proceed from here, and it’s best for the two of us to remain quiet.

“Three months!” the man repeats. “You slept with this man for _three months_? What was wrong with me? Was I working too many hours trying to keep you happy? Or am I just not that good in bed?”

“Plinius, please,” she says with embarrassment.

“No, you don’t get to pretend like you’re innocent,” he says.

But then the woman sits up and looks directly at him. “I will not have you sit here and deride me in front of company,” she says to him.

“You call this ‘company,’” he says with a motion towards us. He turns away from his wife to scowl at Pitch, but when he speaks, he’s still addressing her, “You slept with this man behind my back, and you are calling him ‘company.’ I can’t believe it.”

“What you believe is your business,” the woman says airily. “They are in my house, and I will treat them as company, just like we do for everyone who walks through our doors.”

“Yes, well, most people who come through our doors didn’t father my wife’s child against my knowledge!” he snaps at her.

She blinks, but it appears that after his first few comments, she seems to be able to hold her own. I can’t really believe what I’m witnessing here, and yet I can’t take my eyes off them.

“Really, Plinius, you ought to control yourself,” she scolds him.

“Oh, so _you’re_ giving me shit about self-control when you clearly couldn’t control yourself?” he demands. He has a fair point, but I’d rather just get this over with to leave them to scream at each other without our presence.

“Of course I couldn’t,” she says. “He was very charming—perhaps too charming—and great in bed.”

And now I’m going to start vomiting. Probably out of anger more than out of sickness. I can’t believe that they talk about him like this, like he’s not here, or that he has no feelings.

“So he seduced you?” the man asks, and all I can think is that now Pitch is going to get arrested, but fortunately the woman only laughs.

“Definitely not,” she says. “Charming, yes. Seductive, no.”

I shift uneasily, and Pitch’s hand tightens on mine. I spare a quick glance at him and see that he’s sitting there with his jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on the couple intently. He can’t afford to be uncomfortable or embarrassed about the vulgar way they talk about him, not when this is his future they’re arguing about.

“I can’t believe you,” the man says. “And you let me live this lie for twelve years. . . . That child I raised as my son isn’t even my own flesh and blood.”

“Does it matter?” the woman asks. “You still love him, just as you would even if you knew that he was Pitch’s this entire time.”

The man keeps his eyes on the woman as he shouts out, “Pliny! Pliny, get in here!”

I exchange a brief look with Pitch. This is not going to go down well. Not at all. Tatiana starts telling him not to get their son involved in this and to have a level head about it all, but Plinius takes no heed to her words as he calls out yet again.

Finally a boy of about twelve or so saunters down the stairs. He’s an average-sized kid with his mother’s delicate features; it wasn’t a problem passing him off as Plinius’ biological kid since he doesn’t look like Pitch. When he sees that Pitch and I are here, he pauses and straightens himself up as though he wasn’t expecting that there would be company, then he continues down the stairs and stops by the loveseat near his parents.

“Pliny, what would you say if you found out that this man was your father?” the man asks, motioning towards Pitch.

“Plinius,” Pitch protests. But his attempts fall on deaf ears. The kid looks between the man and Pitch, confusion evident.

“Plinius, please,” Tatiana says.

But Pliny only asks Pitch, “ _Are_ you my father. . . .?”

“Yes,” Pitch answers after only the briefest of hesitations. There’s no way he can deny it even if he wanted to, not after a setup like that. My chest prickles with revulsion for Plinius.

Pliny stares Pitch down in a look reminiscent of his father’s. Or, well, stepfather’s?

“District 7?” the kid asks. Contempt fills his brown eyes. He turns and looks at his mom with irritation. “Really?”

“Sometimes even parents make mistakes,” she answers with a shrug.

I cover my mouth with my clenched fist to keep from saying something in response to that. She didn’t make a “mistake.” She knew what she was doing when she did it; his district number is completely irrelevant and the fact that she tries to pin the root of the problem on Pitch’s “less desired” district makes me want to punch the ever-loving shit out of her.

Pitch shifts uneasily beside me. He has my other hand in his, and he holds onto it so tightly that I almost fear that he’ll break my fingers. But I think I’d welcome the pain right now because it would be what I need to snap myself out of the anger that encompasses me.

The kid turns back and assesses Pitch, as though how Pitch does under this scrutiny will determine whether he’s worthy enough to be the boy’s father. It’s a cold, calculating look, and eventually he returns his attention to Plinius and Tatiana and says, “Give me a break.”

Then he leaves without saying anything else to them. But as I watch him go back up the stairs I see, for the briefest of moments, Neptune’s face peek around a corner upstairs. And I know without a doubt that she heard the entire thing.

“Well, that settles that,” Tatiana says. “This has gone far enough, Plinius. You’re lucky that Pliny loves you so much.”

Right, and he wouldn’t have just abandoned Plinius if Pitch hadn’t been from a “better” district. Maybe a Career district. Then we would see how much their love extended through their family.

“Yes, because it gets resolved that easily,” he says. “We’ll see what the newspaper has to say about this.”

“Plinius!” his wife nearly shouts before she brings her voice back under control. “Please! Don’t tear this family apart because you’re angry about something that happened so many years ago! Be reasonable! You’re only going to hurt Pliny!”

“He’s a strong enough kid,” the man responds. “Do you see how he reacted? We don’t need to worry about him.”

“He’s twelve years old, of course he reacted like that,” Pitch cuts in. “Do you think he’s really going to show how upset he is?”

“I didn’t ask _you_ ,” the man spits at him. “So shut up.”

But Pitch won’t. “What is making this public going to prove?” he asks. “That you’re vindictive enough that you’re willing to destroy your family?”

“I told you to shut up!” the man yells at him. “Don’t make me shut you up.”

I’m on my feet before I have a chance to think about it, but Pitch grabs onto my waist and pulls me back down onto the sofa. He keeps his hands on me even as the man turns back to his wife, not to contain me but to stabilize himself.

“Plinius, _please_ ,” the woman hisses. “Behave yourself!”

“You betrayed me,” he sneers at her. “Soon you’ll get to see what it’s like to be betrayed.”

I don’t want Pitch to ever let me go because I feel like I might just fly out of this seat and lunge at the man, but he removes his hand long enough to shift his grip so that he’s less restraining me and more holding me; in that moment, I nearly throw myself off the couch but his hands are back on me again providing enough pressure to warn me to stay still.

“Listen to reason,” Pitch says. “It’s been years, and you can’t do that to your kids. If not for Pliny then at least for Neptune.”

“What does she have to do with this?” the man demands. “Are you going to tell me that you’re her father, too?”

“No, I’m not.” Pitch barely keeps his voice restrained. “But that doesn’t mean that the fallout of this won’t affect her.”

The man snorts at him and leans his head back. “This is ridiculous.”

I cannot fathom how these sorts of people get by in life. I know that I am angry and impulsive, but I would never sell out my family, no matter how pissed off I was at something somebody has done. Divorce, sure if it’s bad enough. But to go to the media and start vomiting out your life story purely to punish the people who wronged you twelve years ago—and knowing full well that your children will be collateral damage? These people in the Capitol have everything: money, food, stable jobs, _safety_. They want for nothing so badly that they’d rather make up their own problems than accept that life can be pleasant and enjoyable.

“Go ahead and go to the press,” I say as evenly as I can. Everybody turns and stares at me. I continue, “Doesn’t bother Pitch and me—we have plenty of interviews as it is, so what’s one more?—but everybody will know that your wife cheated on you, as you desire. And as a bonus, your kids are going to struggle in school because their peers will make fun of them. Even if they manage to ignore the comments and insults and jokes, it’ll distract them from their studies, ruin friendships, etcetera. Unless you think that having a father who is a victor is going to give Pliny popularity points—which it may—but he obviously doesn’t want it, so his social life _and_ educational life will be trash for no damned good reason. Plus everybody will know that _you_ sold out your family because you’re angry. I don’t know what you do for a living but I imagine it’s pretty good judging by this house; you’re willing to destroy that for revenge?”

The man glares at me, but he doesn’t respond right away. Clearly he didn’t think this whole thing through, but in that silence, I wonder if it matters. If he was so willing to hurt his family like this, does the threat to his own reputation make a difference?

Pitch keeps his arm around me, and we wait for the man’s retort to this. Of course it matters to us what happens; neither of us want another interview, and it’s very likely that it would extend far beyond one additional session with Caligula Klora or whoever they get to ask us deeply personal questions. They’d dig up every little bit of garbage about both of us—mostly Pitch—and that will be far more painful than the picture I’m painting. But this man doesn’t need to know it. He doesn’t care how much he hurts other people, and he certainly doesn’t care about Pitch. Hell, I’d wager that if he knew how much pain the truth would cause for Pitch, he’d go out and tell it right away.

“Your wife is more reasonable than mine,” the man snarls at Pitch. Nobody points out that we’re not married yet; that’s the sort of detail that gets to be overlooked in a situation like this. The man turns to his wife and says, “I will never forgive you for this.”

The woman nods. “Of course, Plinius,” she says. “But don’t think I don’t know about your own affairs.”

The man stares at her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I try to distract myself from these two morons. My eyes flick back towards the staircase, and I see Neptune crouched down at the top of the stairs, watching us silently. She meets my eyes for a moment, but I drop my attention back towards her parents who are still fuming at each other. Lovely household this girl lives in. Quite unfortunate that she got to overhear that entire conversation.

“I think Juniper and I should be leaving,” Pitch says, cutting through the silence. The man and woman turn and look at us like we just suggested lighting their house on fire or something.

But at last the woman stands up and says, “Yes, yes. You two must be on your way.”

The man reluctantly stands when we do, but he stays behind as his wife leads us to the door.

When we are outside in the warm summer sunshine waiting on the curb for the cab, I turn and look at the large house behind us. It, like all the others on the street, speaks of great wealth and prosperity. But is that really the case when the family inside has been built on lies and thoughts of revenge? When adultery with a District 7 victor is bad not because it’s adultery but because it’s District 7 and not a “better” district?

“I think we just got a taste of the trashy talk shows Elijah says we might be on,” I say to Pitch as the cab pulls up in front of us. He clears his throat and opens the door for me. I crawl inside and he follows. He says nothing to my comment but holds me close to him as the car pulls away from the curb.


	60. Chapter 60

After we pick up Caecilia from Esther and Maximus, we take her to a museum as planned. She chooses a history museum which I’m sure will be a real joy, but neither Pitch nor I try to convince her to change her mind.

Pitch spends his time lost in thought. He holds my hand as we walk through the museum, but he only comes alive whenever Caecilia runs up to him to tell him about a fact she learned or to show us an exhibit that she finds very interesting. I struggle to follow along with the words written on the various displays, which is no loss because none of them say anything I really want to read. The Capitol version of history is similar to what we know in District 7, but a little more intense. A little more aggressive. They are the important people, and we in the districts are mere animals who must be tamed and guided and taken care of. We should be honored to serve the people of the Capitol because of the crimes our ancestors committed. I pay it little heed; although the content doesn’t surprise me, it bothers me that the people in the Capitol are being fed it in such a compelling manner. Caecilia is no exception; she voraciously consumes the words of each exhibit before moving on to the next.

Pitch receives a phone call and excuses himself while Caecilia and I watch miniature animatronic soldiers reenact a battle during the Dark Days. When it ends, she presses the button to play it again, and then she starts showing me all the little things she’s noticed, from clever little quirks the designers placed in it the program, to things that they likely missed, such as a soldier without the appropriate patch on his arm.

Eventually Pitch returns, and I know it’s not good by the way that he avoids looking directly at either of us as he approaches.

“Martha would like us to come for tea this afternoon,” he says to me calmly. “She would like to meet Caecilia.”

We arrive at Martha’s house in the early afternoon precisely on time. Caecilia turns and watches Pitch and me every now and again, but despite how we try to downplay our fear, the eager smile she had when we told her that we were going to tea never returns to her face. I’d feel bad about it except that I’m so damned scared about meeting this woman in her own territory that I can’t spare the energy.

Martha lives a few houses down from Isolde in a townhouse that is slightly larger than the District 1 victor’s. It’s a quaint little place that doesn’t quite fit the image of the psychopathic woman who lives inside. An avox opens the door when we approach before we even have a chance to knock. Not the same one that held Martha’s robe yesterday. She must have many of them working for her; this doesn’t surprise me, of course. The avox takes us into a lounge and sits us down to wait for her master.

The woman keeps us waiting far too long, and I know that it’s supposed to unnerve us. The tiniest strand of anger threads through me once I realize that it’s part of her tactic, and I hold onto this familiar emotion so that the fear doesn’t claim me entirely.

Martha emerges several minutes later with a large smile on her face.

“It’s wonderful to see you,” she says with enthusiasm. But her devilish grin tells me that we aren’t expected to return the sentiment and she doesn’t care. “I do hope that I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“Not at all,” Pitch says to her.

“Well, come with me,” she says, and the three of us stand up and follow after her as she leads us through the house. Although it has roughly the same layout as Isolde’s, it looks nothing alike; she gutted the building and shaped the rooms into whatever she wanted them to be. As an arena designer, she must have a clever mind for architecture and design, I realize. This only leads me to fear that she might also have designed traps within this very building that are reminiscent of what she has placed into the arena. I swallow that thought as we step outside onto the porch.

We sit down at a large round table with a glass tabletop. Initially we have Caecilia sit between Pitch and me so that she is not near Martha, but Martha insists that Caecilia sit next to her so that the girl is on one side and I am on the other, with Pitch directly across from her. This setup is very much intentional, and I can’t shake the feeling that something dreadful will happen today.

Avoxes lay out fine china for today’s tea, and once the table is set up, they pour tea into our teacups. Each movement is precise and well-timed so that no avox bumps into the other, and only one avox is at the table at a time. I am certain that Martha has her avoxes trained very well, though I don’t dare think about her methods.

Martha, of course, looks quite at ease with this little tea party even though the three of us are certainly not comfortable in any way. Sure, these wicker chairs with soft floral cushions are nice, but they do nothing to help me feel more relaxed. We proceed with formalities of passing sugar and cream and getting our tea to our liking. Nobody cares that Caecilia pours way too much sugar into her teacup; that’s the least of our concerns at this time. The avoxes lay out two platters, one of finger sandwiches and the other of small bite-sized cookies. Martha tells us to help ourselves, and we have no choice by to comply, of course.

Now that that’s out of the way, the conversation can truly begin.

Martha asks what we thought of the Hunger Games, and fortunately Pitch picks up the conversation and begins discussing with this woman the various aspects of the event, from prep week through the finale. They dance around what happened to Sage as they discuss the arena, and Pitch complements her for some very clever features. He knows her well enough that he flatters her easily and says just the right things to make her smile at him.

“What about you, honey?” Martha asks Caecilia. “What did you think of the Hunger Games?”

“Oh, it was wonderful!” the girl says, and it seems that her excitement is just what Martha wants to hear. She beams at Caecilia and offers her more tea, which she accepts. Then the girl continues talking about all the things that she loved about the Hunger Games, which fights were the best, which tributes would have been great victors, etc. Martha eats up everything she says with relish.

“She’s such a sweet child, Pitch,” the woman says as she turns back towards him. “Darling thing. Has a very keen eye, too. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if she pursues the path of a gamemaker.”

“Thank you,” Pitch says graciously despite the fact that Martha is taunting him with a terrible thought no victor should ever have to entertain. To know that one’s child is part of the machinery that makes the Hunger Games thrive is one of the worst things I can think of—possibly worse than threatening Pitch with the girl’s death. Pitch continues, “She does have a love of fashion, though, so perhaps she might consider being a stylist.”

“That’s wasted on her,” Martha says, with a smile towards Caecilia as though she’s including the girl on a secret. “No, she will be great and do wonderful things for our country.”

Caecilia smiles back at her, a full smile that shows her perfect white teeth with the slightest hints of dimples in her cheeks. How anybody could tell this girl that she’s ugly. . . .

_And yet here is Martha telling her that she is made for greatness. . . . This might be the first time in her life she has heard words like these said about her._

I look down at my half-eaten sandwich and take a deep breath. Regardless of what horrible things come out of this event, maybe at least Caecilia will feel a bit better about herself. And yet I can’t really buy that, not when the person who is building her up is a woman who would be even more eager to tear her down. And how could she damage a girl who’s already at the bottom if she doesn’t help her to the top first?

“Now, my dear girl, how about you go explore the backyard,” Martha says. “We grownups have some talking to do, and I’m sure you’ll find the yard to your liking. You—” she snaps her fingers at an avox standing by the door “—take the girl to see the bunnies.”

Caecilia perks up at that, and she happily joins the avox as he leads her down the steps and into the yard. This is the first time I’ve dared to look around me, and I see that Martha has her backyard well maintained (not a surprise) with flowers and bushes and a small little hutch about halfway between the porch and the back fence. There’s a tiny white picket fence that surrounds the hutch and a patch of lawn; the slats are close together to keep the bunnies from escaping. The avox leads Caecilia up and over the fence, and then to the hutch where he opens the door.

“I have been thinking about us, Pitch,” Martha says, drawing us back to the table. Once our attention is on her, she continues, “Your service recently has been lacking, and I feel that you are not present even when you are with me.”

Okay, here’s the point where she tells him that I die. Or maybe Caecilia will die now that she knows how important she is to him. I put my hands in my lap so she can’t see how much they shake.

Pitch pales, but manages to meet her eye as he says, “I’m sorry. I will try to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I’ve decided to dismiss you from my service. But I do get lonely, and I’m afraid that without you, I’ll be right miserable. So I have decided to take on Juniper as a companion in your absence.”

I freeze and stare down at the table before I can betray my fear. No no no no. I don’t want to be with this woman. I don’t want to be in the same city as this woman, let alone in the same house—or the same bed. Fear chills my body, and I can’t move a single part of my body.

Pitch opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“She’s young, but she’s not too young,” the woman continues, drinking in our reactions but pretending she doesn’t notice at all. “She’s in good health, has lovely skin and hygiene. She has a bit of a temper, but that can be addressed easily enough.”

“Martha, please,” Pitch starts, but she shakes her head.

“I’ve had enough of you,” she tells him sternly. “And you’d be best to not disobey me, right?”

The warning. . . . She had threatened me yesterday because she knew what was coming, and she knew that I would fight against it. So she had “warned” me so that I wouldn’t act out when the moment came to drop the news. Just a “friendly reminder” that we had used up our one chance for her “forgiveness,” and now there were no second chances should we disobey her again. Coldness threatens to seize my brain and paralyze my thoughts.

I can’t reject her. My hands are tied. I can’t even look up at Pitch now.

But Pitch reaches out under the table and takes my hand. The gesture warms me ever so slightly, just enough that I can tighten my fingers around his to show that I’m still alive.

Martha looks down through the glass table at our hands for the briefest moment before her eyes flick back on us.

“When are you getting married? A couple weeks, correct?” the woman asks.

Pitch nods slowly. “Yes,” he says.

“Well, I won’t interfere,” she says as though that is our main concern. “You two will be happy enough together. But I think I would like your company, Juniper, after the Presentation of the Victor and the subsequent party. It would be nice for us to celebrate the end of a wonderful Hunger Games. I don’t think Pitch will object to that.”

“Okay,” I manage. I don’t want to celebrate. I don’t want to be with her. Bile rises in my throat but I know I don’t have a choice.

“We’ll go from there,” she says. “If you are good enough—and I don’t have any doubts that you will obey me—then perhaps your companionship will be needed in the future as well.”

 _What about Quintus?_ _I thought he was supposed to protect me,_ I think as I desperately try to grab at some out. But then again, somebody who designs the arenas must be extremely powerful. . . . Perhaps her power outweighs his.

Although I don’t dare look at her, I feel her eyes sizing me up as she soaks up the fear that emanates from me. I wish she didn’t know how much she scares me, but I can’t concern myself with saving face right now; I just need to worry about staying alive for one minute, one hour, one day longer.

“I will send by a dress for you to wear,” she tells me. “It will arrive at your apartment the day before the Presentation. . . . Which I imagine won’t be too long now, since the District 1 girl, I hear, is recovering quite well. Just do be a dear and wear it for the evening—it’s my favorite color, and I think you will look gorgeous in it.”

“Martha, please. I’ll do whatever you want,” Pitch tries. He keeps his voice even and calm, but the strain is evident.

The woman only shakes her head sadly. “You had your chance, Pitch,” she says.

“I followed your orders,” he says. “I have only gone against your wishes once, and I accepted your punishment for it. . . . Since then, I have not disobeyed you.”

“I did quite love our time together,” the woman says with mock sympathy. “But that episode really made me doubt your loyalty to me, and I’m afraid that you never properly convinced me that it was a mistake.”

Pitch falls silent at this. He can’t argue anymore against a woman that won’t be told no, and he knows that he has to back down against her. My stomach churns, and I feel like I’m going to vomit, but I just keep swallowing until the sensation begins to subside. My eyes burn with tears that I don’t dare let fall. She can see my fear, but I will not allow her to see my tears.

Martha then turns to me. “Don’t you worry, Juniper,” she says as she reaches out and touches my arm. “We will have a relaxing evening together.”

The conversation falls silent. Nothing about the evening will be relaxing. I hate it. I hate her. I hate everything about it. Pitch’s hand tightens on mine, and I know that he’s trying to comfort me, but for the first time, it doesn’t seem to do a damned thing. His comfort won’t take away the horrors that I’ll have to endure in a few days’ time. He won’t be there to hold my hand when things get too overwhelming. And what of her saying that she will address my temper? What does that even mean? What the hell is she going to do to me?

 _Okay,_ I tell myself. _Pull yourself together. You’re a victor, and this is part of victory, whether you want it or not. Pitch has had to deal with this from various people since he won seventeen years ago; you can deal with it, too._

I take a deep breath and squeeze Pitch’s hand.

We’re distracted from our own thoughts only when Caecilia appears holding a large brown rabbit in her arms.

“Isn’t it so cute,” she announces when she walks up. But the moment that she sees Pitch and me, her smile vanishes. She can’t possibly know what news has just been delivered, but she can tell it was bad news. Her mouth opens, and after a second of hesitation, she says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, no, not at all, dear child,” Martha reassures her. “We were just having a conversation, but I think it has come to an end. What do you think of the rabbits?”

Caecilia glances at us again and then puts a smile on her face. “They’re so beautiful, and so sweet,” she says. “This one is my favorite, and I hope it’s okay that I moved him out of his home—I just wanted to know his name.”

“Oh, that one must be Fluffykins,” she says. “A very good rabbit. Do you see that I take such good care of them?”

Caecilia nods. “Yes, they have a nice place to play,” she says.

She looks out across the yard, and Martha says, “Yes they do. And there is a small little obstacle course for them, just on the other side of the hutch.” She points towards a tiny collection of fences that, from this angle, don’t make any sort of sense. But if one were to view it up close, maybe it would be something of a picket fence maze. I wipe my eyes on a napkin while everyone is distracted so that I can see far enough into the yard.

“Is that a guillotine?” Caecilia asks. Sure enough, in the far corners of the yard is a small guillotine tucked between two flowering bushes but raised up on a brick base so that it catches the afternoon light.

“Yes, that is. Good eye,” she tells the girl. But this time, Caecilia doesn’t smile. She clutches the bunny close to her. Martha adds, “That’s for when it’s time for me to make stews or pies or other delicacies.”

Caecilia turns and stares at her. I choke and struggle to catch my breath. Pitch’s hand grasps mine more firmly.

“Y-you eat the bunnies?” Caecilia’s voice sounds so small and childlike. The rabbit in her arms is completely unaware of the conversation and looks just as dumb and cuddly as it had the moment she pulled it from its yard.

“Why yes, of course,” says Martha. “Certainly you enjoyed your sandwich today, didn’t you?”

Tears well up in Caecilia’s eyes but to her credit, she only says, “I think I’m going to put Fluffykins back away before he misses his friends.” Then she turns around and marches back to the hutch where the avox waits for her.

But does Martha dismiss us then? No. When Caecilia comes back, Martha looks at our somber group and starts talking about her plans for the upcoming weeks. She asks us questions—to which we give minimal answers—but it’s clear that the point is to hold us here in misery rather than to actually converse with us. And I don’t think she could manage to find a more miserable group right now. I have managed to regain my composure to the point where I don’t feel like I’m going to cry or throw up, but words aren’t eager to come to me anyhow.

“I find that decapitation is an extremely efficient process,” the woman says when her eyes drift back to the yard and the bunny hutch. “I don’t like sedating my animals first—that gives the meat a chemical flavor, I feel—though sometimes they do squeal quite a bit and it makes the process a little more challenging. Still, they barely know what’s happening before it’s already done. There’s blood, but that can easily be cleaned up, and it makes far less of a mess than other methods.”

But of course, she’s not talking about bunnies. She’s talking about tributes—in particular the one who died because Pitch disobeyed her. Pitch stares her down, the anger evident in his expression, but he says nothing to her at all. She smiles sweetly at him before she talks about some of the other methods she’s tried on her rabbits but they were never quite as good as the guillotine. “Besides,” she adds. “There’s something so satisfying about watching the blade slice through the neck.”

Finally she’s had enough of torturing us and says that it’s about time she got back to work and that she looks forward to seeing us at the party at the president’s palace.

We thank her for her hospitality—even Caecilia follows our lead—and then we head outside. Rather than waiting on her sidewalk for a cab, Pitch keeps us moving to put as much distance between her house and us as we can before he hails a cab to pick us up. The three of us huddle close together and wait in silence for the cab to slow down in front of us so that we can get out of here as soon as humanly possible.


	61. Chapter 61

When we get back to the apartment, we put on a movie, but none of us have the heart to watch it. Eventually I can’t stomach it anymore, and I retreat to the bedroom where I pace back and forth. I want to scream and yell and break things, but I know that I can’t, and that only makes the pit of emotions within me bubble and froth. I consider digging into Elm’s alcohol but that thought only lasts for a few seconds; although it did the trick and dulled my sorrow and anger, I know that I can’t just turn to alcohol every time I get upset. And what about Pitch and Caecilia? I can’t do that to them.

I open the bedroom door to leave and try to sit still in front of the television again when I hear Pitch talking to Caecilia.

“I’m sorry that that woman frightened you,” he says quietly to her. I hear the girl sniffle, and I know that she must’ve finally broken down after holding herself together for so long. “I didn’t know that she was going to say that, nor that she even kept rabbits for that purpose.”

“She’s mean,” comes Caecilia’s wavering voice. “I don’t think Juniper wanted to kiss her yesterday.”

Pitch hesitates. “No, she didn’t,” he tells her.

“Then why did she do it?” Caecilia asks. “I wouldn’t have kissed her—she’s terrible!”

“I know,” Pitch says. “But don’t worry; you will never have to worry about that.”

I slowly close the bedroom door again and leave them to their conversation. Caecilia is more perceptive than I thought—and I think that Martha was very correct about that. She may look like a child and talk like a child, but she assesses the situations very differently than most children. _Except Rosa, maybe,_ I think. But I can’t deal with ghosts of the past right now, not when horrors of the present threatened to bear down on me.

I strip off my clothes and head to the shower where I stay for far longer than I should because I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with myself after I get out. But when I do, I wrap a towel around myself and paw through the clothes in the bedroom dresser. I eventually dig something comfortable out of my drawer and change in the bathroom. They do little to warm the deep cold within my chest, and I consider layering myself with as many blankets as I can in an attempt to make it go away. When I return to the bedroom wondering where I stored all the extra blankets, I find Pitch sitting at the edge of the bed flipping through my most recent book like he’s contemplating reading it himself.

But as soon as he sees me, he stands up. I throw myself in his arms and he holds onto me tightly. I can’t hold myself together anymore, and I begin to sob into his neck. He sits me down on the bed and doesn’t let go.

The anger and pain and sadness. . . . Just when I thought that maybe things were levelling out and wouldn’t get worse. . . . Just when I thought that maybe we could start to think about _us_ and our future once we got all the children sorted out. . . .

And yet I feel so damned selfish. Pitch has had to deal with Martha for years now, and in what way would it be fair for him to be enslaved to her forever? He’s finally getting a break from her. And yet, I also know that he’s not. Pitch doesn’t see the dismissal from Martha’s services as a relief when it has only been shifted over to me. Now it’s worse for him—the pain has multiplied a hundredfold—because he knows what’s in store for me and can do absolutely nothing about it. Martha doesn’t care who is in her bed as long as it’s somehow hurting someone else.

“We can call off the engagement,” Pitch says once I begin to calm down. The words rush out of him. “We’ll get Esther to find you someone, maybe one of Maximus’ friends. Then you won’t have to—”

“Pitch,” I cut him off, pulling away from him enough so that I can look at him. Tears fills his red-rimmed eyes that mirror my pain. “I won’t marry anyone but you.”

“But Martha—”

I sniffle and wipe my nose on my sleeve. “I know,” I say. “I hate her. And for that reason, I’m not going to let her break us up.”

He nods. “I was afraid you’d say that,” he says. “But I think that it’s for the best—”

“Don’t leave me,” I manage as another wave of tears threaten to overwhelm me. “Please.”

Pitch doesn’t respond. He might think that marrying me off to a Capitolite will protect me, but I don’t want it. I want _him_ , and I don’t care if that means that I’ll have to sleep with Martha. I close my eyes and try to calm myself.

“I won’t,” he says at last. “I’m right here.”

With his words, I find myself starting to relax. He won’t leave me. He might not understand that I value our relationship more than protection, but he accepts it. His lips brush mine, and I kiss him. He tightens his arms around me and pulls me closer so that my body is pressed against his, and I can feel his heart beating in his chest, and he no doubt can feel mine. His lips are warm, exuding a heat that melts the ice that has frozen within me. He holds me and doesn’t let me go. His lips break away from mine as they travel across my cheek and down my neck; when I flinch in surprise as his mouth reaches my collarbone, he apologizes and returns to my lips.

As we kiss, I feel the anger and fear leaving me. I know they will be back soon enough, but I just want a few minutes without their constant presence baring down upon me.

We pause to catch our breaths.

“Juniper, if I find out any way that I can keep her from you, I will,” he whispers to me.

“At what cost?” I ask. “I don’t want to know that somebody died in the fallout. That’s not worth it.”

He runs his thumb along my jaw and kisses me gently. “I don’t want you with her,” he says. “You saw the way she treated us today—how she tortured us and then turned on Caecilia. She is a cruel woman, though if she likes you well enough, she lets you forget that. . . .”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” I say.

He looks at me and nods. I know he wants to say more, but he keeps it to himself. His lips return to mine, more gently this time. He tucks my hair behind my ears as he kisses me, and runs his fingers through my hair. I focus on his lips against mine and on his fingers in my hair, and I let myself believe that he can protect me from whatever is in store for me in a few days’ time. I don’t care if I’m telling myself a lie because right here and now, Pitch makes everything okay. And I think I see how he does it—how he appreciates the small moments of sanity that he can grasp in his life and holds onto them to get him by. But the things that get me by all involve him, and I know that without him, I’d never stand a chance in the Capitol. So yes, I’ll take the pain of being rented out to Martha if it means that I can stay with him. I tighten my arms around him and clear my mind of the future.

When we go to our room for the night—after we’ve managed to calm Caecilia down enough by staying with her until her eyelids droop and she lets us turn out the lights—we climb into bed and hold each other.

“I’m taking Caecilia took the bookstore tomorrow,” I whisper to him.

“The bookstore, huh?” he asks. He strains to sound normal, but we both know that it’s just a meager attempt to pretend that our world isn’t spinning so fast that it’s trying to throw us into space. “Doesn’t she have enough books? I’m not sure her mom’s going to let her take them with her.”

I try to pretend that I don’t have an ulterior motive in choosing the bookstore. Yes, both Caecilia and I have far too many books to read over the next couple days, but I need to talk with Quintus. Pitch would never approve of me willingly going to visit him if he knew that was my main objective. Or, even worse, he’d want to come with me. Right now, I need to do this on my own.

Because I’ve seen what Pitch’s life is like. I’ve seen how he blindly follows orders because he’s been beaten down every time he tries to make his own decision. And I know that it’s inevitable that I, too, will become that way, but I will not go down without a fight. Maybe Quintus can help me. Maybe he can’t. But I won’t know until I talk with him. And though I don’t dare get my hopes up, I can’t help but think that maybe—just maybe—there’s some way that my future with Martha will change.

“She needs to take her mind off of today,” I tell him.

He laughs but the humor isn’t fully there. “She’s too much like you,” he says. “Soon we’ll have to move into a bigger apartment to hold all the books.”

I smile in the darkness, but it fades away as quickly as it came. I close my eyes and lay my head against his chest and listen to his heart beat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: I decided to research how to write people kissing (after the 12th kissing scene, I know, I know, but I was getting bored), and the recommendations were terrible and encouraged excessive use of similes and metaphors, which really don't go well with my current writing style. One site even quoted Twilight as an example of how to write kissing, so I read the passage until I laughed so hard I cried and gave up on research altogether and decided to wing it.


	62. Chapter 62

Caecilia spends extra time applying makeup this morning because she didn’t sleep well last night, and she says there are dark circles under her eyes. I don’t see these circles, but I only tell her to make sure to use the concealer sparingly and then I leave her to her own devices. When she’s ready, we head to the bookstore.

“I know I already have a lot of books, but if I see another one that I like, may I buy it?” Caecilia asks me as we crawl through the city streets. A traffic jam has slowed down our cab to the point where it might as well have been faster to walk.

“Of course,” I tell her. “You can buy as many books as you think you’ll be able to enjoy.”

She smiles at this and then goes back to watching the people walking by us. None of these people seem to care about looking into the windows of the cars struck in traffic; their attention remains on whatever lies ahead. They laugh and whisper as they go, clearly enjoying their stroll through the city.

“They’re waiting for the new victor,” the cabbie says, and I look up towards where the man sits in the driver’s seat. He watches me out of his rearview mirror. “The hospital’s a few blocks up, and the traffic is backed up because so many people are waiting for news of her recovery. Which, I should add since I have already been down this way once this morning, is going just splendidly.”

I force a smile. How the new victor recovers isn’t my concern today. I know the bookstore’s only a few blocks away, so I ask the driver if we can get out now, and he says that that’s fine. So I pay him and herd Caecilia out of the car and onto the sidewalk where we walk briskly the remainder of the way to the bookstore, passing up all the cars stuck in traffic.

As we approach the store, I coax myself to wipe the urgency from my expression. I glance into the window panes of a passing shop to make sure that I look at least somewhat reasonable. I don’t want to go to Quintus in a panic, begging him for help. My mind may be cluttered with all sorts of thoughts and worries, but that’s not the sort of impression I want to give. I am a victor, after all. I usher Caecilia into the store and take her back to the children’s section.

“I’m going to wander a bit,” I tell her. “Will that bother you?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “There’s plenty here to keep me occupied.”

I nod and then head elsewhere in the bookstore with no real destination. I am not coming to Quintus, I remind myself. I am merely strolling through the shelves of books, and if he is here, he will find me. He must have a tracker on me, I think; he’s always so good at locating me within a few moments of setting foot in his shop.

As I meander, I look at various titles that catch my attention, though I don’t really read a single thing even when I pull the books off the shelves and review their dustjackets. All the fiction titles begin to look the same, and their blurbs are even less comprehensible. I wander away from the mysteries and adventures and romance and head further into the nonfiction where at least the brightly-colored spines and interesting cover art keeps me entertained.

I close one book and slip it back on the shelf when something catches my attention. For a second I wonder if it is Quintus, but it’s not—it’s Daphne. She browses the titles of some nature books or another, and it takes me a second to remember that she’s not just an escort but a former biologist. And here she is in her native environment researching plants or trees or whatever she studies, even after she told me that her duties had changed. _Perhaps,_ I think, _her duties only changed temporarily._

It’s none of my business, and I have greater concerns than whether my escort reads scientific literature on her free time.

I turn around and nearly run right into Quintus—but I recognize him only after my arm shoots out to defend myself from the person who sneaked up on me. Quintus blocks my punch and grabs onto my arm.

“Jumpy, are we?” he asks as he lowers my hand to my side.

I glare at him. “You snuck up on me,” I mutter, almost ashamed that I just tried to clock him for the sole reason that he walked down this aisle of shelves a little too close to me.

He considers me with an amused smile before he says, “Come, I think you need some tea.”

I follow him through the bookstore and towards his VIP suite. Until now, I had just worked out that I’d come to this bookstore and meet Quintus; I never thought about what I’d actually say. My mind sorts through sentence after sentence, desperately picking at phrases and clauses in an attempt to find something halfway coherent and not too pathetic. But the more I try to think about it, the more frantic I become and the less useful thinking is at all.

As soon as we sit down in the chairs of the VIP room, the avox comes right over. Quintus orders us both tea and the avox nods and disappears into the backroom.

“You sure like to read,” Quintus says as we wait for our drinks. “It’s a pleasure to see you so frequently. . . . And that you’re not avoiding my bookstore altogether.”

“Caecilia needed more books,” I say nonchalantly.

“Of course,” he replies. “I imagine a child can go through two dozen books pretty easily in just a few days. No, Juniper, I know that you come looking for my company.”

I’m saved from having to respond to this because the avox returns with two mugs with teabags steeping in the hot water. He sets them down before us, and adds a little tray that has sugars and creamer. I pick up my mug and hold it between my palms. The avox bows and leaves us to our conversation.

“How was your afternoon with Martha?” he asks.

I start and turn to him. How the hell could he possibly know that?

He chuckles at my reaction. “Oh, see, Martha and I are old friends,” he says. “We go way back, and sometimes she tells me things, and sometimes I tell her things. So she just happened to let it slip that she was inviting you and Pitch over for afternoon tea.”

Oh shit. Okay. This was a bad idea. Why the hell did I think that Quintus could help me?

 _Hang on, stay calm,_ I order myself. _He never specified that he was actual friends with her. He uses “friend” to describe your own relationship with him, so that could mean anything._

But still, I know I need to proceed with caution. Pitch warned me, after all, not to be too friendly with him. That’s where he had gone wrong with Martha, and now she owns him—and, of course, now me. I tighten my grip on my mug and focus on the heat transferring into my hands.

“It was eventful,” I say. “But we ended up leaving before she could demonstrate her guillotine on the various rabbits she let Caecilia get attached to.”

“Yes, she’s a very interesting woman,” Quintus says, and I bite back a response to that because nothing I’d say would be pleasant enough for the situation. If the woman is more powerful than Quintus, I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot.

But why am I here if not to take a risk?

“You know, I suppose, that Pitch has been in her service for years,” I say to him, though I stare at the mug in my hand and swirl it gently to watch the teabag move.

“Yes,” Quintus says carefully.

“She dismissed him,” I say. “And I am his replacement.”

He draws in a sharp breath. “No, that isn’t right, is it?” he says more to himself than to me. I feel him studying me, pulling me apart and piecing me back together. I force myself to leave the safety of the mug and turn to look at him. He says, “She is a very powerful woman. I have given you my protection, but I must proceed carefully with her.”

“So you can’t do anything?” I ask with irritation.

“I won’t be any good to you if I’m dead,” he responds.

Great. So she _is_ that powerful.

“When do you start?” he asks as though this is a new job I’m excited to begin.

“After the Presentation of the Victor. Well, after the party,” I say.

“She wastes no time,” he says. But after a few seconds’ thought, he continues, “I can’t promise you anything, Juniper, because as I said, she is powerful. Nor can I promise reprieve, if I can deliver it at all, in a timely manner. But I will do what I can to ensure that you are dismissed from her service as quickly as possible.”

I suppose that’s the best I can hope for. It’s . . . not what I wanted, of course. I had hoped that he would tell me there was a way to end this before it began, but I will take what I can get.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

He gives me a rueful smile. “The life of a victor is not an easy one,” he says.

Quintus then tries to engage me in a discussion about literature, but both of us can see that it’s not going to be happening today. So he instead tells me that he will be having some books delivered for me to my apartment along with whatever Caecilia picks out for today, and he hopes that we can discuss them in the future. I nod and tell him that we can, but then I disappear into my tea mug. I know that I should enjoy the last few days I have before I am forced into service, but I can’t pull myself out of my head and focus on the world around me. Instead I succumb to an ever-present darkness that threatens to consume me if I fail to keep its shifting shadows at bay.

“Juniper,” comes Quintus’ voice. I blink and look up at him. “You are clearly under the weather today. I suppose all the excitement of the last few days is getting the best of you. Go home. Take the girl with you. Spend some time with Pitch and, I don’t know, do whatever victors do to keep yourselves entertained.”

I nod and thank him again for his help, but it takes me a few seconds to convince myself that I can get to my feet and be functional for a few more hours. Just a couple hours. Then I’ll deal with everything. I place one foot in front of the other and head out of the VIP room and to the children’s section where I find Caecilia reading quietly to herself, a dozen books piled up on the ground near her feet. She smiles when she sees me, and I return with as much of my own smile as I can give. Then we take the books to the counter for delivery and head out of the store.


	63. Chapter 63

The news reports focus on Europa Vitner, and who this wonderful girl from District 1 really is. They weave together a story using footage from the arena and photos and interviews from her family and friends back home. They do this to some extent for every victor, but I suppose I never really cared enough to pay attention. Now, however, Caecilia turns on the television whenever she gets the opportunity in the hope that she glimpses our newest victor the moment she leaves the hospital. I, on the other hand, selfishly dread the girl’s recovery; as soon as she gets better, they will have the Presentation of the Victor. And after that, the party. And after that. . . . I know I shouldn’t think too much about it.

Pitch tries to distract us by getting us into the kitchen to help him make lunch. As much as I don’t feel like helping—or doing anything at all, really—I force myself to go through the motions. I even encourage Caecilia to help me make cookies to take to Esther and Maximus as a thank you for watching her; the girl is eager to participate, but keeps disappearing into the sitting room to check out the latest news.

“It’ll be a couple of days, Caecilia,” Pitch tells her as he pauses stirring the sauce he’s making on the stove. “She needs time to recover.”

“I know,” she answers from in front of the television. Although I can’t see the screen from where I stand scooping batter onto cookie sheets, I hear the crowds of people cheering for Europa outside the hospital. Traffic must be backed up for miles, I’m sure; the reporters mention that they’ve closed several city blocks off to accommodate the surge of people. Somewhere in that hospital is the new victor. . . . And her mentor waiting with her through the recovery process.

“I should go congratulate Isolde,” I say to Pitch.

He pauses his work and looks over at me. “She’s probably in the hospital most of the time, if not all,” he tells me.

“I figured,” I say with a nod. “But I know she’d do the same for me.”

Pitch sets the spoon on the trivet next to the stove. “After lunch. I’ll go with you to show you the secret entrance the public doesn’t have access to,” he tells me.

I raise an eyebrow at this. “There’s a secret entrance?” I ask.

“Yes, otherwise victors would be assaulted every time they came or went,” he answers.

“We’ll have to take Caecilia,” I say.

He gives me a wry smile. “I don’t think she’ll have a problem with that,” he answers.

I don’t like the idea of dragging her along with us because I know that it’ll only draw more attention to her. She’s a kid and doesn’t understand the complexities of victory; it just doesn’t seem right to draw her into our world when she’s so used to living in a society that doesn’t see the grime and grit of behind the scenes. She will be out of place, and as a result, people will pay more attention to her—and to her relationship with her father. A relationship that the public doesn’t know exists.

Pitch must see that something bothers me because he says, “It’ll be okay. She’s good at following directions, and she understands that she has to stay out of the way.”

We eat lunch as soon as it’s ready, and by the time we finish, the cookies have been cooling on the racks and are almost ready to pack up. But we eat those, too, even though they weren’t made for us with the promise that we’ll make more for Esther and Maximus.

“Caecilia, I hope it won’t be too much trouble, but you don’t mind going with us to the hospital, right?” Pitch asks her as we package away the remainder of the cookies to eat later. We’ll have to figure out something else later.

The girl looks between the two of us, her eyes large with worry.

Pitch quickly adds, “We’re fine—Juniper wants to check on Isolde.”

The worry vanishes, replaced by a smile. She asks, “Do I get to meet Isolde? And . . . Europa?”

Her eagerness gets a chuckle from Pitch. “Maybe Isolde, but don’t get your hopes up in case she’s not available,” he says. “But I doubt that Europa will be strong enough for guests. You’ll have to wait for next year to meet her.”

Caecilia nods, but then says that she’s not ready and needs to go put on something decent. Pitch tells me that he can clean up the remainder of the kitchen and that I should get ready, too. I would have thought that after all this time together, he’d understand that I don’t really “get ready” like Caecilia does. But I leave him to himself and head to the bedroom to pull on a fresh shirt and enough makeup so that if a camera does catch us, I don’t look like the walking dead.

The back entrance to the hospital is a block away from the building but thankfully free of any sort of public attention. We travel through an underground passageway that eventually leads to a hospital entrance where they take our information and route us in the right direction. From there, we follow signs to the elevator that leads us to the victory floor.

I was a patient on this floor two years ago. Stepping from the elevator onto the cold tiles brings a wave of apprehension, and I stop before I can keep my legs in motion. Pitch reaches out and nudges me forward.

Many things on this floor are like a typical hospital, but there are so many eerie differences. Rooms are clearly labelled to indicate what processes go on inside, but they’re often unnerving. I know I’ve been in most of these rooms, but usually they require the patient to be unconscious so that broken bones can be realigned, skin can be grafted and smoothed, and organs can be healed or replaced. There are few recovery rooms here, but the ones I pass bring a surge of memories: opening my eyes to find myself surrounded by machines and connected to dozens of wires; flitting in and out of consciousness for days on end; waking up to find that I’d changed mentally, emotionally, and physically, and not knowing what aspects of me were me and what was altered by the surgeon’s knife. Eventually things smoothed out and I grew cognizant of myself and my surroundings. But through it all, Pitch, as my mentor, stayed with me. Most mentors do; it would be considered highly disrespectful to abandon your new victor in the hospital, but he says it happens every once in a while.

A nurse directs us to a waiting room where we find Isolde, Hammer, and Jericho of District 1 plus the escort and Europa’s stylist. There are other people here, too, but I don’t know who they are.

“Juniper, Pitch!” Isolde says. Then her eyes fall on Caecilia and she grins. “Oh, look, I had heard rumors, but I didn’t know if they were true.”

“This is my daughter, Caecilia,” Pitch introduces her. And then he goes around the room telling Caecilia who everyone is and what their job is. Caecilia greets everyone politely, but I know that she must be _dying_ to have expected to meet only Isolde but gets the bonus of two additional District 1 victors. And some of the team that works with them. While they all gush over how adorable Caecilia is, I nod to Isolde and she joins me in the hallway.

“Congratulations,” I tell her.

She beams at me, the dimples pronounced. “Thanks, Juniper,” she says. “Europa is really wonderful, and I don’t just mean in terms of her weaponry skills. When she wakes up and things get settled, I hope that you have a chance to meet her—and that you like her.”

I’m not fully convinced, but then again, I never thought that I’d be friends with Isolde, either.

The two of us start to meander down the hallway. I know that Isolde won’t want to go too far from the waiting room. She tells me that Europa is in a “vitality” procedure, but doesn’t further elaborate on what that means. However, as soon as the new victor is wheeled back into the recovery room, she needs to be there.

“So can you tell me what the heck is with Pitch’s kid?” she asks me as we stray further from the room where we won’t be overheard by them. “Where did she come from?”

I hesitate. Pitch says that his services to the Capitol is known to the victors but that they don’t normally talk about it, which leaves me uncertain how much I’m supposed to say.

Isolde picks up my hesitation. “So she wasn’t from a wanted relationship,” she says quietly, her eyes straight ahead on the hall in front of us.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” I say.

“Yes. Pitch is well-liked in the Capitol,” she says, and I think that’s a fair way to put it.

“She’s a really sweet kid,” I say. “And she loves to read, so that’s a bonus.”

Isolde grins. “Of course that’s a bonus. You guys are nuts,” she teases. “But I’ll give it to you guys that she’s a cute kid. How long do you have her for?”

“I don’t know, actually,” I admit. “Her mom just kind of dumped her on him because she had a party to go to and needed a free babysitter. She’s nuts—the mom, I mean—and she didn’t even bring Caecilia any clothes or anything.”

“I guess you have to be nuts to—you know, maybe I should keep my mouth shut,” she says before she can get very far. I laugh, but she’s right. We can’t sit here and badmouth people like Faustina because they were given permission by someone powerful in the Capitol to do what they did. Not somebody we want on our bad side.

_Not somebody like Martha._

“Hey, well, now that Europa won, this means you can at least take a break from mentoring next year,” I switch topics because I can’t bear to start thinking about Martha. I swallow hard and try to sound like I’m happy for Isolde. Which I am, but I need to concentrate on making that happiness audible.

The smile drops off of Isolde’s face, and I know that I’ve said something wrong. For a second, I wonder if I’ve offended her—maybe she really likes mentoring and I didn’t understand it. But then I realize that it’s likely quite the opposite. I turn my attention to the tiles below our feet. Career victors are strange, and I think they have their own customs when it comes to the Hunger Games; that would explain why there are so many of them in the Capitol every year. But that doesn’t mean that they _enjoy_ mentoring, or that they’d want to mentor several years in a row.

“I will likely be mentoring next year as well,” she says carefully.

“But there are so many of you,” I protest. “Surely you can talk somebody else into doing it.”

Isolde sighs. “I was assigned to mentor this year. And last year. And the year before,” she says. “And I will probably be assigned to mentor next year, too.”

I stop walking, and she does as well. Mentors don’t normally get assigned, at least not in District 7. We choose who will be mentoring each year; I figured it was to allow flexibility or—more likely—to make sure that we all remained competitive with each other to be eager to shove another victor into the position of mentor. Other districts might have alternate methods of choosing mentors, but I wouldn’t have thought that District 1, of all districts, would require assignments. And I have a suspicion that it normally doesn’t.

“Things work differently in District 1,” I say, not wanting to directly call her out because I know that there are eyes and ears in this hospital hallway.

“I pissed someone off,” she says. We step back to allow a nurse with a cart of supplies to pass us by, and then Isolde waits until she’s long gone before she begins talking again, her voice lowered to barely over a whisper. “They wanted me to promote the Hunger Games by going to classrooms and talking about how wonderful it is to be a victor. I happened to be sick on one of the assignments—I was so overwhelmed from going to classroom after classroom that I just _couldn’t do it_ —so I was given a choice: I could prove my loyalty to the Capitol by mentoring for as many years as they needed, or my little sister could be killed. Of course there was only one option.”

I stare at her for a few seconds, not sure I really heard what she said. Of course I understood her just fine—the Capitol is cruel and made sure that she knew that she had to do what they told her before they made her do it. But to give her such an option. . . . I doubt that Isolde will be missing any more classroom visits in the future.

“They couldn’t make you other victors do that, not from District 7,” she continues offhandedly. “But in a Career district where we’re supposed to love the Hunger Games, there’s no reason that we wouldn’t want to encourage others to join us.”

“So how many years?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Maybe a couple more, I don’t know,” she says. “I think that after awhile, people will begin to question—like you have—why no other victors take my place as mentor, and then they’re going to have to give me a break.”

It does look strange that a district teeming with victors who supposedly love the Hunger Games don’t all clamor for the opportunity to mentor. Then again, I’m sure that the Capitol has a way to swing it so that it looks like Isolde has been hogging the honor.

“Well . . . I’m glad your tribute won,” I tell her. “Of course I would have preferred one of District 7’s, but in the absence of having them win, I’m happy that your tribute was victorious.” I’m not happy about what she did, or how thrilled she was to have won, or how easily she smashed open other kids’ skulls. But for Isolde’s sake, I am happy that Europa is the one in the hospital recovering from her injuries.

“Thanks, Juniper,” she says with a sad smile. “As I said, Europa is pretty awesome.”

The two of us continue walking in silence. Even the Career victors, who seem to be pretty okay after victory, have their share of problems it seems. Like the Capitol citizens, they aren’t allowed to dislike the Hunger Games—in fact, I’m sure that they’re expected to love the Hunger Games even more than most Capitolites. They are the face of the Hunger Games, after all; they are sculpted to be the pinnacle of victory, and younger kids who are eager to join them look up to them as their heroes. The Capitol allows none of us to become complacent after victory. We are not our own people but are tools for propaganda.

By the time we reach the waiting room again, Isolde has a smile on her face once more, as though our conversation never happened at all. And I suppose it didn’t.

Hammer and Jericho are answering all of Caecilia’s questions about the Hunger Games. Her prodding doesn’t faze them, and they don’t flinch at her enthusiasm. Ten minutes ago, I would have wondered if they were still so eager to participate in the Hunger Games that they basked in the attention they received, but now I think that it’s more of a mask they wear to keep people from doubting their loyalty to the Capitol.

I sit down in an empty seat next to Pitch, and we spend the next fifteen minutes chatting with the people present. They can barely sit still in their excitement, and the words and enthusiasm fill the room to the point that I think it can hold no more.

But then a nurse comes and lets Isolde know that Europa is being moved to her room, so Pitch and I excuse ourselves and thank them for allowing us to visit. We pry Caecilia away from the District 1 victors and direct her down the hallway towards the elevator.


	64. Chapter 64

We head to a science museum for Caecilia to explore, and I admit that it’s far more interesting than the history museum. At least this one has useful information that likely isn’t manipulated for the Capitol’s agenda, and it doesn’t focus on how superior the Capitol is to the districts. Caecilia might learn something that isn’t meant to brainwash her.

As she explores, she has so many questions for us, and I’m afraid that my meager knowledge of science can’t answer it all. Fortunately each room has a docent or two who take the time to explain to her everything she wants to know. They eagerly engage her in conversation, and they tone down the explanation to something that a kid will easily understand. Funny how educated people are in the Capitol, and yet they can’t understand how pointless and terrifying the Hunger Games are.

My cell phone beeps once to signify and new text message. Pitch’s beeps a moment later, and we exchange a quick glance, then look around for Caecilia. She is busy with an interactive movie display discussing electricity, so we find a bench and huddle together to check our messages. They both contain the same words:

Congratulations on Your Engagement!  
Attached is an itinerary for upcoming events.

We scroll through the information provided: a session at a beauty center this afternoon, a photoshoot tomorrow morning, an interview for the both of us tomorrow evening. The list goes on.

“Juniper,” Pitch says.

“Yes?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes away.

“They chose a wedding date for us. . . . later next week,” he says. He clears his throat. “It’s here in the Capitol, not back in District 7.”

I lower the phone and look at him. No way. We were pretty damned clear that we wanted a small wedding. . . . And now they’re taking that away from us. Although I’m not surprised, I clench my phone in my hand and try to get ahold of myself. _We’re still getting married, and that’s what is important._ Because I don’t trust myself to say anything that wouldn’t get us in trouble, I turn back to my phone and scroll down the list.

Sure enough, it gives us a time, date, and location of our own wedding.

Looks like I’ll be calling my parents in the near future to let them know that I don’t get to share this part of my life with them. Another part of me that the Capitol has taken away from them. Figures.

I reach the end of the list and realize that it’s signed “Daphne Vespasianus.”

“It seems our escort is interfering in our personal lives after all,” I mutter.

“I just saw that,” Pitch says. He studies me for a second and then says, “It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”

Yes, yes. But first I have to get through the “celebration” with Martha. There’s a conveniently empty spot in the schedule in a couple days’ time where I know that all the attention will be on the new victor . . . and then after the victor goes home, all spotlights will shine back on us. Our freedom from the Capitol will not come as soon as we hoped.

I take a breath, slip the phone back in my purse, and say, “Well, I guess it’s only a little over a week. We’ll manage.”

But only moments later, we receive another text from Daphne telling us to meet her this evening when our “beauty session” is complete. She gives us an address and Pitch texts her to let her know that we received it.

“Do you think Esther is going to get angry if we ask her to babysit for the fiftieth time?” I ask him. But there are few choices here. I don’t trust just anyone to watch her, especially just a random Capitolite babysitter. But we also can’t bring her to all the events with us because it’ll just put unnecessary focus on her, which is the last thing we want.

When I call Esther and begin the conversation by promising her that I owe her big time, she just laughs and tells me to send Caecilia over whenever I need to. I don’t even need to tell her that that was my reason for calling. We finish the rest of the museum and then take Caecilia back to Maximus’ house. Then we head on to the beauty center to have the upper layer of flesh sheared off our bodies.

I hate the beauty center. They call us to come here every now and again, whenever they feel like we’ve grown enough of our normal skin that needs to be removed because natural isn’t beautiful or something. Pitch tells me that it’s not really _that bad_ and I tell him that he can stuff it because he doesn’t get nearly as many procedures done as I do.

“Good afternoon, good afternoon!” the man greets us when we walk through the door. He wears all white, and his hair is clipped short and his face clean-shaven. He begins chattering with us about how he’s so pleased that we’re here and he’s thrilled about our engagement and upcoming marriage. As he talks, he works on his computer, his fingers plunking around the screen effortlessly. Finally he says, “All signed in. Just one moment, please.”

Sure enough, a woman appears from a doorway. She, like the man, wears all white and everything about her appearance is perfect and orderly, from the hair tucked up into a bun to the very way she walks. She introduces herself as Hira and invites us to join her.

Hira leads us through one hallway after another, and then she says that for the sake of privacy, she’s going to separate us and that if Pitch doesn’t mind waiting in one room, she’ll have me wait in the other, and our personal teams will be with us as before we know it. Pitch wishes me good luck. I can only return his words with an irritated stare which earns me a laugh from him. But he disappears into his assigned room, and Hira ushers me into mine.

From here, a team of three people come in, introduce themselves, and lead me to yet another room where they bathe me and begin scrubbing my skin with brushes and abrasive soaps. They occasionally spread soothing lotions onto me, but it does little to remove the pain.

“Juniper, I hate to say this, but your hair is out of control,” one woman says as she looks at my legs. “Do they not have beauty centers in District 7?”

“Oddly enough, no,” I reply dryly.

“Surely they have razors,” she says as she stirs a pot with a thick liquid in it. I know it’s going to hurt—this is not the first time they’ve waxed me hairless—and I brace myself for the inevitable.

“Yes,” I answer. “But I have no desire to use one.”

The woman tsk-tsks me and then scoops a spoonful of wax onto my leg. I wince under its heat, but it cools ever so slightly as she spreads it across my skin. For the next half hour, the three of them work on removing every bit of “unseemly” body hair from my legs to my face and everywhere in between. They sculpt and shape what hair remains—“We don’t want to make your eyebrows too thin, but good heavens, girl, these are crazy!”—so that I’m sure the bits of hair that are left are works of art. Then they rub more cream into me which barely removes the sting but seems to satisfy them regardless.

“We aren’t going to do too much with your hair,” says the man as he takes the scissors to my shoulder-length brown hair. “I’m sure that your stylist will want to do their own thing, so I hate to interfere.”

They file my nails into even, uniform shapes and smooth out the edges. Again I’m told that they’re leaving them basic for others to work on for the wedding.

At long last, they lead me to a shower and give me another wash-down, this time with softer brushes and healing soaps. They dry me off with puffy towels and finally I’m good to go. After dressing in my street clothes, I thank them for their help and they lead me out of the room.

“You’re going to be so beautiful at your wedding,” the man says to me as he takes me back through the corridors towards the lobby. The women nod in agreement. “You and Pitch are just so perfect together.”

“Thank you,” I say to him. When the door opens to the lobby, I find Pitch already waiting, and I scurry over to him before the beauty center employees can pin me down and try anything else. He puts an arm around me, thanks the staff, and then leads me out of the building.

“Was that terrible?” he teases as we walk down the pathway towards the sidewalk.

“Have you ever had your legs waxed?” I ask him. “What about having everything waxed? I don’t think there’s a part of my body they _didn’t_ apply hot wax to.”

He laughs at this and admits that I had it a little rougher than he did. But I still get the distinct feeling that he doesn’t take my dislike of the beauty center seriously.


	65. Chapter 65

We meet Daphne at her apartment in the evening. My skin still stings from where they decided to rip off all of my body hair despite the soothing lotions they layered on afterwards. Or maybe it’s just my own annoyance at being treated like an animal. My skin is too soft now, and so is Pitch’s. Holding his hand feels very weird. He assures me that it’ll be more normal in a day or two when our skin has a chance to heal; it does little to ease my annoyance but I know that I have to put it aside to deal with this conversation with our escort.

“It’s nice to see you two again,” she says as she shows us to a small sitting room in her apartment. It’s a comfortable and simple place, but it’s filled with plants and vials of dirt and a great many books whose titles I can barely pronounce. She offers us tea, but has to clear a couple leafy plants off the table and move them to another table so that we can easily access our mugs.

“We received your text about the itinerary,” Pitch says easily as he picks up his mug from the little leaf-shaped coaster on the table. “It was a little . . . unexpected.”

Daphne sits back in the chair across from us. She holds her mug in between her hands and looks at us carefully over the rising steam. Here in the comfort of her own place, she wears a t-shirt and designer jeans—nothing too crazy for somebody who’s supposed to be an over-the-top Capitolite by trade.

“I suppose you don’t mind me being honest with you here,” she says. “This is my apartment, and I feel quite comfortable being candid with you.”

“That’s fine with us,” Pitch says.

This is weird. Everything about this is weird. Daphne, her apartment, the supposed honesty she’s going to give us. She sits there in her mild Capitol clothing like she could be from the rich parts of our district. There’s something about her that’s not Capitol-like, but I can’t put my finger on it.

“We here in the Capitol want to share in your wedding,” she says. “There are some who believe that by marrying quietly in District 7, you are intentionally misleading us and denying us our opportunity to appreciate your happiness. And, of course, it isn’t appropriate for a victor to mislead the Capitol in any manner.”

Shit, we just want to get married and we don’t want to make a big deal about it! Anything the Capitol does automatically turns it into a much bigger production than we care about.

“I see,” Pitch says. “So in order to show the Capitol that we are not trying to trick them, our wedding needs to be held here rather than in District 7.”

“Yes,” Daphne confirms. “I hope that it doesn’t bother you too much that I’ve taken the liberty to organize the upcoming events. I figure, no offense, that you needed the help since you weren’t prepared for something more than a person or two. I have also composed a guest list which will be a mere one hundred people—much smaller than the over seven hundred they originally suggested.”

“Thank you,” Pitch says.

My throat closes and I try not to scream. One hundred people! _One hundred!_ I wanted no one there, and now we’re getting one hundred.

 _It’s better than seven hundred or more_ , I tell myself in an effort to get me to not freak out right here and now. I glower at the table as though it’s somehow responsible for what has happened.

“Over the next week, there will be a series of events to get you prepared for the wedding,” she continues. “But I think it’s best to talk about tomorrow’s interview. . . . While I have no doubt that you know how to handle most interviews, I do have some insight into what they want to hear.”

Pitch nods. “Appreciated,” he answers.

Daphne takes a sip from her mug and sets it down on the coaster before sitting back once again. I realize as I watch her that she looks so much more comfortable here than she did anywhere else I’ve seen her. Her movements are fluid, lacking the stiffness at the reaping. Her voice is even and calm.

“You decided to switch your wedding to the Capitol because you wanted to share the date with your friends here in the city,” she says. “The guest list is bigger than you originally planned, but it’s still going to be pretty small and comfortable.”

When she says the word “comfortable,” she looks steadily at us, emphasizing that we really do want this to happen in the manner in which it will be happening.

She continues, “I have taken the liberty to invite some of your fellow victors. I did not invite anyone from your home district because I feel that might be a little too difficult to get them passes before the wedding. I hope your parents will be okay with this, Juniper.”

“I think they will understand,” I say.

They have no desire to come to the Capitol. Like other district residents, they have heard rumors and tales of what it’s like here, and even from the little I’ve told them of my experiences the last two years, they know that it’s not a place that simple folk like them would appreciate. Of course they’ll be upset that they don’t get to go to the wedding, but I think they’ll be more upset that they know that it’s not our choice and not something that I would have wanted. They’ll know that the Capitol is forcing my hand here.

“Good. Now I’m sure you’re going to get plenty of questions about your dress. Juniper, you are to not say a whole lot about it because Pitch isn’t supposed to know what it looks like,” Daphne instructs. “The moment you start describing it, even if it’s nothing that Pitch will be able to put together based on the description, people will start trying to draw it on their own, and then leaked images will get out, and you’ll have to go back to the dress store to pick out something entirely different, understand?”

I nod.

She continues, “Tasha and Leander will be working on you the day of your wedding, so make sure to mention them if it comes up. I think they’d like a good word placed in for their hard work. The wedding will be at the Royal Hall which is near the City Center. People will want to know that detail, though of course it doesn’t give them an invite just to show up. Your wedding colors are green and brown—like a forest—and your decorations will be embracing District 7 so that you can share your home district with your friends here. They will want to know who is in your wedding party, but you don’t have one—I managed to talk them out of making that a necessity—so you’re allowed to share that information, too. The wedding starts at 3:00 PM, followed by dinner in the banquet room of the same place. There will be dancing, but I’ve only scheduled it in for about half an hour closer to the end of the celebration.

“Following the end of the party, you two will be allowed to leave before the other guests. You will be escorted to Hotel Chartreuse,” she continues. “I highly suggest that you don’t reveal the name of the hotel to anyone, especially not at an interview.”

“We don’t get to come back here?” I ask. “What about Caecilia?”

“Her mother will pick her up before then, I’m sure,” Pitch tells me, which is little reassurance. “And I doubt they want us to spend our wedding night in our apartment.”

Oh. Wedding night. Right. Something that I probably wouldn’t have given a second thought about were we back in District 7. Heaven forbid we go back to our apartment and be comfortable.

“Pitch is correct. They have set you up with a very luxurious suite. The public will not know which hotel you’ll be staying at, but if somebody does catch wind of it, we’ll move you to another one so you don’t have to worry about anybody bothering you,” Daphne continues. “So be aware that you might have to be flexible on some of the details here. Afterwards, you’ll go on your honeymoon. Here you get a choice.”

I can’t imagine that it’ll be too much of a choice. But Daphne pulls her tablet out of a pouch and lays it down on the table. She presses a button and a holographic image of a beach appears.

“This resort in District 4 is well-known to those in the Capitol, but despite that, you will get some privacy here,” she says. Her index finger taps the tablet again, and it shifts to a beautiful mountainside. “This is in District 2. A little more rugged, but people enjoy it anyhow. Not as popular as the beach, but there are plenty of hiking trails. And this—” she transforms the picture to lush sprawling fields “—is in District 10. Not a whole lot to do, in my opinion, but you at least won’t be bothered too much by Capitol citizens since there will be fewer there.”

A beach, a mountainous forest, and an empty field.

“We can’t just go back to District 7?” I ask knowing full well that the answer is no.

Daphne smiles. “District 7 is beautiful, but so are the other districts,” she says. “It would not be appropriate to deny the Capitol the honeymoon that they have prepared for you.”

“Okay,” I answer. That would be a stupid reason to die.

“You have been to other districts, I take it,” Pitch says to Daphne. “Which do you recommend?”

She flips through the pictures once more and then says, “This particular resort in District 10 offers little in the ways of activities, so you would be expected to keep yourselves entertained in your hotel room. And I think you have seen quite a few mountains and forests both locally in the Capitol and in District 7. For that reason, I suggest you go with District 4.”

“Is it crowded?” he asks.

“They will make sure that you’re not swarmed with people asking for autographs,” she says. “They want you to enjoy yourself there. . . . And, of course, provide a good review for your stay.”

“Okay, we’ll go with District 4—if that’s okay with you, Juniper,” Pitch says.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I say. I really don’t care at this point. It’s all such bullshit. I don’t want to have a big wedding, or a fancy hotel afterwards, or a luxurious resort. How the hell does it make sense that I’d give up my insistence for a quiet elopement in District 7 for _that_?

Daphne picks up her tablet and taps the screen a few times. The holographic image disappears, but I can’t tell what she’s doing. It’s not until she tucks it away and says, “Okay, that part is out of the way,” that I realize that she booked us for the resort already.

“I advise that you state your appreciation to the Capitol for organizing this wedding,” Daphne says to us then.

“How is anyone going to buy that I was so adamant on a small wedding in District 7, and now suddenly I want this big thing here in the Capitol?” I demand before I can stop myself.

Pitch clears his throat. “Juniper sometimes has a hard time expressing herself at interviews,” he explains to the escort. In other words, I’m a terrible liar. Still, the question remains: if I was so eager to get back to District 7 to get married, why the hell would I suddenly decide to stay in the Capitol and have a wedding that is fundamentally different from what I had wanted?

“As I mentioned, you wanted to celebrate with your friends,” she says.

I shake my head. “That’s not good enough,” I tell her. She looks at me puzzled, so I try to explain, “It’s a weak motive. I really don’t care about celebrating with my friends, and I think if I just switch 180 degrees from where I was a couple days ago, people will get suspicious and wonder if getting married in the Capitol is really my choice. I mean, people are suspicious enough that they’re wondering if Pitch is taking advantage of me, so they’re likely going to run away with any theory that seems reasonable to them.”

“She has a point,” Pitch says. “We were pretty vocal that we wanted a small wedding in District 7 without much interference.”

Daphne looks from one of us to another, but it’s clear that she hadn’t thought about that. So far, her plan had seemed pretty solid—but that’s not believable when the bride and groom have insisted that they want something completely different than what they end up getting.

“If we move your wedding date up a few days, it would be believable that you wouldn’t have gotten anything arranged quickly enough in District 7 and decided to stay here in the Capitol to get married because it could be done sooner, but the Capitol doesn’t want to be told that you’re here only out of convenience,” Daphne thinks aloud. She taps her index fingers against her lips. “Or we can say that there was too much drama happening in District 7 and you didn’t want to deal with it, but again, that’s not very flattering to the people here. . . .”

“So we can’t come across like we’re using the Capitol to get married, but that we’re going out of our way to include the citizens,” Pitch confirms.

The escort nods. “People want to celebrate with you here, not get intermittent feedback about things that happen in a different part of the country,” she says. “And, of course, they want you to be grateful about it.”

“Juniper, you might have to go with Daphne’s plan,” Pitch says. “I know it’s a stretch, and I know it’s going to be hard for you to convince people that it’s the reason we switched locations, but if it’s what they want to hear, we’re going to have to give it to them.”

I swallow the anger and stare at some dumb plant sitting on the table next to the coffee mugs. It’s a leafy thing whose vines drape off the side of the table onto the floor. I’ve never been a liar or an actress; there’s no way I’ll be able to convince people that I would just _love_ to have my intimate District 7 wedding expanded and shown off to everyone in the Capitol.

“Daphne, is there a way we can cut down the number of guests?” Pitch asks.

She sighs. “I already reduced the number of people significantly,” she admits. “I’m not sure I could remove too many more without offending anyone.”

“We would like to avoid offending people above all since we’d like to start our marriage on a happy note,” Pitch says. “But when I say that Juniper has trouble expressing herself at interviews. . . . What I really mean is that she’s terrible at lying, and her emotions easily betray her.”

“I see,” Daphne says. She looks at me as though she expects me to either protest his description or add more to it. But Pitch pretty much summed up the concern.

“So our concern is that if she is expected to tell everyone that she suddenly wants to go from a quiet wedding of zero people to one with one hundred—which is understandably small by Capitol standards but far different than what we had planned—she might not be as convincing as she needs to be,” he explains.

“That is a problem,” the escort says. “I will look into it and see what I can do.”

“But Daphne, we do ask one favor,” he says, and the escort nods for him to continue. “We want to make sure everything goes smoothly. If anyone were to think that this request is made for our preferences, I’m afraid that they might see us as objecting to the changes. And honestly, we don’t want to offend anyone in the Capitol.”

“Then I’ll proceed with caution,” she says. “With the understanding that, given this condition, I might not be successful at all.”

“Thank you,” Pitch replies. I mumble my own thanks.

“Now then, tomorrow morning there is a photoshoot,” Daphne says. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem for either of you, but I’ll meet you at the destination—which is in your itinerary—at the scheduled time. We’ll reconvene before the interview to go over any last-minute details. And then things will probably be pretty quiet because we don’t want to take the spotlight from the new victor. Afterwards, however, expect to be very busy. You can read the itinerary in more detail, but there will be an additional interview as well as a couple of dinners in your honor, and probably some promotional stuff to hype up the wedding, among other things. I think when all is said and done, you’ll appreciate the chance to get out to District 4 and relax.”

Daphne continues on with more information, but I blank out. I honestly couldn’t say what the hell happens from there because my brain is in an entirely different plane of existence where there are no weddings at all. I’m vaguely aware of Pitch nodding as she talks, and I can hear her voice, but it sounds far away and garbled like I have stuck my head into a tank of water.

“Juniper?”

I blink and see Daphne staring at me. “Are you feeling okay?”

“She’s getting overwhelmed,” Pitch says. “I think, if it’s okay with you, we might have to call it a day.”

Daphne studies me for a second and then says, “Yes, of course. I guess it came across as a little much considering that a couple hours ago, none of this existed. The Capitol has a way of interfering with things, doesn’t it? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

“We are appreciative of your help,” Pitch tells her. “I’m not sure what we’d do if we were left to our own devices in this situation.”

Die. We’d probably die. Because one of the other of us would make a mistake, and then the only reasonable outcome would be to kill us.

I begin to tune out again and Pitch and Daphne exchange a few more words, and then Pitch is helping me to my feet. The motion of walking again draws me back to reality, but I don’t have any words to give Daphne when we part. Pitch thanks her again on behalf of both of us, and Daphne says that it’s not a problem and to call her at any time if we have further questions.

“She’s a biologist,” I tell Pitch as we emerge into the evening air.

“I gathered,” he says. “That was quite an assortment of plants.”

“No, I mean she didn’t want to be an escort—she was originally a biologist who had an assignment change,” I clarify.

Pitch frowns. We cut across the grass to reach the sidewalk rather than taking the winding concrete walkway.

“Why’d she switch?” he asks.

I shrug. “She didn’t specify. Just said she had to re-evaluate her priorities.”

“Hmm,” he comments, but we’re already at the sidewalk where we find a cab waiting for us. He says nothing more on the topic, but the car ride is quiet as we both disappear into thought. After seeing Daphne’s place and how different she is here than anywhere else, I have no doubt in my mind that the transition from biologist to escort was not made out of her own free will. But why her career changed, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Not that I have the energy to do so; I’m too filled with my own problems to worry about hers. Still, I’m grateful for her help in organizing this wedding disaster—for somebody who prefers plants to people, she’s handling it better than I’d expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's another interview coming up, and I thought that I'd do that thing where I ask you what questions you want asked. So if you have questions you would like Caligula to ask Juniper and Pitch, or topics that you'd like to see covered, feel free to post in the comments.


	66. Chapter 66

Before we pick up Caecilia at Maximus’, we stop by the apartment so that I can call my parents. They are going to be upset about the change of plans, but I know that they’ll understand that it wasn’t my decision. In some ways that’s worse because it means that they’ll know that the Capitol is exerting its control over me, which will only cause them further distress.

“Hey, Juniper,” Pitch says as we step inside the house. He puts a hand on my arm to pull me from my thoughts.

“Hmm?” I ask as I turn around and look at him.

He kisses me briefly, then says, “Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to get through this. We’ve been through so much more than this, and we’re going to make it through the next week and a half just fine.”

“Thanks,” I say. I give him a hug. It’s the most energy I can expend right now. He returns it, but we both know that we need to get on with what we have to do.

I plop down on the couch and pull my phone from my purse.

“Are you okay if I stay here?” he asks before he sits. “I, um, don’t want your parents to think that. . . .”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him before he has to struggle with how to phrase that he’s afraid my parents are going to hate him for what’s happening, or that they blame him for convincing me to marry him, or whatever. Not that I think they will. Even if they’re ticked off at Pitch, they know that he’s not the only factor influencing our relationship. I might keep my parents out of the loop, but they’re not stupid and they know that the Capitol meddles in people’s affairs.

He relaxes and sits down next to me. I dial my parents’ number and put it on speakerphone.

“Hello?” Mom asks almost immediately.

“Hi, Mom, it’s me again,” I tell her. Though I have to remind myself that “again” doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense when it was quite some time since I called her last. “Pitch and I just wanted to say hi and give you guys the latest update.”

“Oh, Juniper! I’m so happy to hear from you again!” she says with relief. “Let me go get your father.”

In the next minute or two, she rounds up my dad and figures out how to put her phone on speaker without changing the volume. In the meantime, I try to sort out how to break the news to them. They probably just came to terms with the fact that I’ll be getting married, and now I get to tell them that they can’t be there.

“When are you coming home?” Dad asks right away.

Pitch and I glance at each other. This conversation isn’t going to be quite as easy as the last one. How the hell am I supposed to let them down without making them worry?

“There has been a change of plans,” I say, and I can hear my dad mumbling something to my mom. I take a breath and continue, “We’ve been given the, um, opportunity to have the wedding in the Capitol next week.”

My parents are silent.

“Then they have provided a honeymoon for us afterwards, so I’m not sure when we’ll be home,” I tell them.

“That sounds like a nice opportunity,” Mom finally says. “What does Pitch say about this?”

Pitch clears his throat. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Sadik,” he says.

“Please, if you are going to be part of our family, formalities aren’t needed. Alder and May are just fine,” my mom insists.

“Okay, thank you,” he says. He pauses for a second to gather his words, then continues, “Firstly, I want to apologize that we didn’t talk with you about this before coming to the Capitol. It wasn’t supposed to get out, so we thought we had time. . . . Then we had hoped to have the wedding in District 7 as originally planned, but the Capitol is gracious enough to host it here.”

“I see,” Mom answers. I wonder where Dad has gone, or if he’s passed out on the floor somewhere. But Mom only says, “We will have a small celebration when you return. Just the three of us, and any friends or other family you’d like to invite.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say. “Is Dad okay?”

“I’m right here,” Dad says solemnly. “We will be having a discussion when you two get back.”

“Honey, I told you to leave them alone,” Mom scolds him.

Pitch looks at me with worry but I roll my eyes to show him that it’s nothing he needs to stress about. Which might not be true—my dad has given me some pretty harsh lectures over the years, so who knows what’s in store for us. But right now, we have bigger trees to fell and I can’t stress too much about what my dad’s going to say when we return. Pitch relaxes a little but still remains poised on the edge of the couch.

I think Mom puts her hand over the phone now in order to talk with Dad because all we hear are muffled voices. But eventually she comes back on and says, “Your father is fine with the marriage. He would just have rather things have gone differently.”

Me too, I want to say. But I bite it back and instead say, “I’m sorry, Dad. We should have planned for this better.” Not that any of this was planned, but since he doesn’t know that and I don’t want to mess up our story, I stick with it.

“I want you two to have a very nice wedding,” Dad says. Which I think is the best we’re going to get out of him right now. Between his irritation at the whole affair and the fact that the cell phone is being monitored, he can’t really express whatever is on his mind. Sure, he’s probably happy for us, but there’s something else there—and I’m sure it has to do with the fact that we’re getting married in the first place. But then he says, “Pitch, you take care of my daughter.”

I groan. “Da-ad! Please!”

“Yes sir,” Pitch answers him. That seems to satisfy my dad and then my mom is back in charge of the phone call.

“We hope that you have a wonderful wedding and a relaxing honeymoon,” she says. “But we’d like to see you back in District 7 as soon as possible because we miss you greatly.”

“Thanks. Miss you, too,” I say.

We say our goodbyes and then hang up the phone.

“I can’t wait for my dad’s lecture,” I mutter as I toss the phone into my purse.

Pitch laughs. “Is it worse than anything here in the Capitol?”

“It might be,” I say, but I know it’s not. My dad loves me; these people claim they do, but they do not. They don’t care if their words sting or burn or carve deep into my chest.


	67. Chapter 67

Caecilia comes to the photoshoot in the morning with us because she can’t be calmed down once she hears that it’s happening. Even though she’s not involved, she wants to watch it all unfold, and Pitch finally agrees to allow her to tag along—despite my protests—under the condition that she follows his orders.

So when the three of us walk into the studio, everyone is surprised to see her and just gushes over what a wonderful kid she is and _she has his eyes!_ like it’s some new revelation. I wonder if they know how genetics work, but then I remember when my cousin had a baby everyone kept trying to assign his body parts to the various parents and grandparents like he was a ragdoll made up pieces of his family rather than his own person. So maybe it’s not something unique to the Capitol, even if they do make a bigger deal of it than they should.

I keep Caecilia with me as they take me into a changing room and get me dressed and prepared for the photoshoot. The team keeps getting distracted because Caecilia keeps telling me how beautiful the dress is, and how lovely they styled my hair, and how gorgeous I am overall. They love the attention she gives them through her compliments to me, and it only makes her more endearing to them. But, of course, it drags out the entire procedure which just makes me irritated, though I dare not express it.

The dress they put me in is not a wedding dress—“That would be inappropriate,” I’m told, because Pitch should not see me in a wedding dress until The Big Day. But it’s definitely reminiscent of a wedding dress with its intricate beadwork and tight bodice that makes my boobs appear a bit bigger than they are and also keeps me from taking full breaths. You would think that with all the technology the Capitol has, they’d figure out how to make a dress that gives them the appearance they want without taking away the basic life function of breathing.

The makeup on my face is heavy, but that’s because of the bright lights and cameras. Caecilia finds it amusing, but I can’t spare the energy to humor her and laugh with her. Still, she smiles at me as they lead me out and position me with Pitch on their set.

Pitch looks remarkably normal. It’s not fair that men don’t always have to be dressed up in elaborate costumes like this, but women are expected to wear stupid things all the time. Sure, they put makeup on him—which I’d laugh at if I weren’t already irritated and my breathing impaired—and they styled his hair in a way he’d never wear it, but at least he gets to wear a relatively comfortable-looking suit and not this damned dress that weighs fifty pounds. Pitch puts an arm around me before they even tell him to, and he leans in to whisper in my ear, “Relax a bit—I’m here with you. We’ll go to the store and order you a punching bag after this is all done.”

The absurdity of his comment causes me to laugh despite myself, but it’s curtailed by the dress and I end up gagging. Pitch flinches, and I mutter, “I can’t breathe in this thing.” Still, his words lighten my mood if only just a little, and I lean into him as he pulls me closer.

I’m vaguely aware that the cameras are already snapping photos of us as we get ourselves situated. No doubt they captured our dialogue thinking it was a romantic exchange. Whatever. I guess that’s what they’re supposed to do.

Then the director begins giving us instructions and coordinating our movements and telling us where to place our hands or arms or heads or legs so that they can get perfect shots of the two of us together.

 _At least we’re together,_ I think as I recall the last photoshoot we had in which our escort broke us up out of revenge. Speaking of escorts, I take a quick glance around every now and again and try to find Daphne between the bright lights. Eventually I locate her keeping her distance but watching us coolly. Caecilia waits with her, an eager look on her face.

The director orders the crew to remove the bench we’re sitting on, and then they reposition some of the plants behind us to freshen up the set. They have us stand now, holding each other close, and I think that this isn’t too bad at all. Though as I press myself against Pitch I realize that they put some cologne on him for absolutely no reason because this is a photoshoot and not something in which smells are going to get captured and transmitted to whoever sees the pictures.

“What’s with the cologne?” I whisper to him.

He laughs and ruins a serious picture, which gets a comment that I can’t quite hear from the director.

“You don’t like it?” he asks.

“No, it’s weird,” I tell him. “You smell like the Capitol.”

“I tried to tell them that this was a photoshoot and thus wasn’t necessary, but they wanted me to smell good for you,” he says, his voice low.

“Well they missed the mark by a long shot,” I tell him.

The director calls out for us to stop talking and to look deeply into each other’s eyes. It takes a minute or two for us to pull that off without laughing, much to the chagrin of the director. They snap a few pictures, shout out a few more orders, and things carry on.

Then we’re ordered to kiss. I shoot a look of irritation at the director, but I know that we have to go along with whatever they tell us to do. My own comfort means nothing, of course; otherwise they wouldn’t have put me in this dress.

But then I hear Daphne’s voice as she walks forward: “We’re going to save that shot for the wedding,” she says to the director.

She and the director exchange a few words with each other. I can’t pick up what they’re saying, but the director is trying to convince Daphne that the kiss needs to happen right now because it would be the perfect way to end the photoshoot, but Daphne says that neither Pitch nor I overtly display our affection and it would be out of place in this photo session. Finally the director gives in—she is our escort, after all—and Daphne retreats back into the darkness.

So the director gives us a couple more poses, and then he calls the photoshoot complete.

Pitch’s hand lingers on my ribs and he pinches at the material of the dress. But unlike normal fabric, this stiff material is pressed so tightly to my body that it has no give.

“What the hell is this?” he asks.

“Some torture device or another,” I tell him.

“The wedding dress doesn’t have this, does it?” he asks me worriedly.

I glance around us. They’re shutting off the lights and taking care of the cameras, but we’re far from alone. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about the dress,” I say to him.

He leads me off the set as the crew begins to unravel cords and pick up decorations. “I’m going to kiss you,” he tells me once we’re removed from everybody else. Still very much in public, though, and anyone can look over here and see. I glare at him, and he says, “You can’t look at people like you want to murder them whenever they want us to kiss. And we’re going to have to kiss publicly—you heard Daphne.”

So we kiss and it’s mediocre because I _am_ thinking about murdering people and it doesn’t really make for a good kiss.

When our lips part, I realize that a couple people are staring at us, including Caecilia. But her wide eyes are full of admiration and happiness. When it’s clear that we’re not going to start making out here, she runs over to us.

“You are so beautiful,” she says. She gives me a big hug, and then hugs Pitch. But when he releases her, she says, “You’re wearing cologne.”

“Is that bad?” he asks.

“It’s weird,” she says.

Before the discussion can continue any further along, Daphne walks over to us.

“Once you two are changed back into your clothes, I’d like to invite you over to my apartment to talk about the upcoming interview,” she says calmly. We agree, and I take Caecilia back with me to change and scrub the mass quantities of makeup off my face. The entire time, I wonder what is wrong; we already talked with Daphne yesterday about the interview. But then I remember that she told us that she would see if they could cut down the number of guests, so she must have an update for us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, in case anyone is interested, I began a short piece about Esther, which can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919894). It won't be updated as much as this story. Completely different style and intended to be much shorter than my normal works.


	68. Chapter 68

After dropping Caecilia off with Esther and Maximus (who tell us that they’re going to take her to the zoo if that’s okay with us, and it is), we return to Daphne’s apartment. Once again, we sit on her couch in a room filled with plants and dirt, and she gives us tea while we talk.

“So you have a daughter, Pitch,” Daphne says casually to him.

“Yes,” he says.

“This is news to me.” She takes a sip of tea but watches him over the side of the mug. I want to tell her that it was pretty big news to me, too, and she should join the party. But it’s a comment best kept to myself.

Pitch takes a breath and says, “We just reconnected. I’m spending time with her while her mother is out of town.”

Daphne sets down her mug and studies him carefully. “Whenever an escort is assigned to a new district, he or she receives a file that contains information about all of the victors in that district,” she begins. “In your file, Pitch, it mentioned nothing about children. I need to know why this information is not included as part of the public record.”

When Pitch hesitates she continues, “Whatever you say will be kept confidential, but I imagine that your child will come up in interviews if the public was not aware of her existence and now suddenly they are. I need to know the full truth in order to help you prepare for this interview.”

She stares at him with such intensity. I wonder if she stares at her plants the same way as she studies them for her research. It’s a curious but not disrespectful manner in which she looks him over and waits for his answer.

Pitch sets down his mug and sits back in the couch. He assess the woman carefully before he begins speaking. She says she wants to know the truth, but how much of that truth is he supposed to give her?

“I was never listed as her father on her birth certificate, but I am her father,” Pitch says evenly. He holds her gaze as though the full story bore him no pain but was another fact of life. “Her mother and I had a brief affair, but she decided to cut me out of her life when she got pregnant.”

“And?” Daphne says, raising an eyebrow.

“And I have had no contact with her or her mother until a few days ago,” he says.

Daphne frowns. “Why did she suddenly reach out to you?”

“I’m not certain, but I suspect that it may be related to the last interview,” he tells her.

“And here I thought that was just another annoying question,” Daphne says bluntly. “Are there more children? From either of you?”

I shake my head, but Pitch says, “Yes, there are three others that I know of.”

“Okay. Are any of them a part of your life?” she asks.

“No,” he answers. “Two don’t want their children to know about me, and one of them is in the middle of a family quarrel. While I assume they have decided not to tell the world that one of their children is mine, the father is rather volatile and he might change his mind.”

Daphne taps her index finger to her lips and contemplates the situation. “Although this interview is aimed to focus on your wedding and you two as a couple, I’m afraid that the spontaneous appearance of children might affect the question choices,” she admits. But she seems to be talking more to herself than to us. “They would like to have this issue resolved so that people don’t think that you are going to be sleeping around with other women in the future.”

“I will be,” Pitch says, and Daphne looks up at him with surprise, her mouth slightly open. “It’s part of my duty here to the Capitol.”

Judging by the confusion in her eyes, I don’t think she realized that this was an aspect of victory; she, like most people, had no clue that victors were used in this manner. I suppose it must throw a wrench into her plans because the confusion turns quickly to annoyance.

“So these children are also from your ‘duty’?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

“Shit, okay,” she says as she rubs her eyebrows. “Back to the drawing board.”

Indeed. Too much effort goes into these interviews. Everything must be carefully crafted to deliver the message that the Capitol wants to hear, and I see that even the Capitol citizens themselves struggle with this. Daphne sits back in her chair and rubs her chin in thought as she tries to devise the next step of the interview plan. Everything must be perfect. We must show the Capitol how grateful we are for their generosity while also downplaying the cruel things that they have done to us—to Pitch in particular. It’s a very delicate procedure and our biologist-escort struggles with creating a story for us that will hit all of the items we need to cover.

“I think it’ll be easier if we don’t focus on my future duties to the Capitol,” Pitch says at last.

Daphne looks up at him. “But they need to know that you’re not going to do this again,” she says. “They want to know that this is ‘happily ever after’ for the two of you, and the possibility that you will cheat on Juniper needs to tactfully addressed.”

“It was ten, fifteen years ago. I was a new-ish victor,” Pitch says. “I was mesmerized by the Capitol.”

“I’m going to barf,” I say with an eye roll. “I swear if you say that in an interview, I will vomit on you.”

“And then you met Juniper, and you realized that you wanted her and nobody else,” Daphne says. Before I can open my mouth to protest, she silences me with, “I’m sorry, Juniper; you’re going to have to suppress your gag reflex.”

I groan in annoyance, but they both ignore me. The two of them go back and forth creating this little story to sell to the Capitol should they show their interest, and then they talk about the children a bit and how we tried to track them down.

“The good news that comes out of this is that you now have a reason to have your wedding here in the Capitol,” Daphne says in between sips of tea. “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get them to cut the number of guests, but I think that the desire to have your children—Caecilia in particular since she’s the only one who is really part of your life right now—present at your wedding will give you both a convincing reason to have changed your wedding from a quiet elopement in District 7 to something moderately bigger in the Capitol.”

I guess that’s an advantage. But that’s kind of a scraping the bottom of the barrel sort of upside to this mess. Still I nod to show that I understand what she’s saying, and I try to pretend that it’s really the reason that the wedding venue was changed so that when Caligula asks, I won’t be trying to outright lie.

Pitch and Daphne continue to work on the backstory and I listen to whatever they come up with and hope that Pitch does all the talking during the interview and that they let me sit there and smile at them while they admire my freshly-groomed eyebrows or something. Not that I want to be some object to be ogled, but it’s not like they were respecting me to begin with. But the interview planning begins to wind down. We don’t have too long before we have to go the designated place to get prepped for the interview.

“Juniper said that you used to be a biologist,” Pitch says. He takes a sip of his tea.

“Yes,” Daphne confirms.

“That’s quite a jump from biologist to escort,” he says. “May I ask the reason?”

“Well, since you two have been honest with me, I suppose it is only fair if I am honest with you,” she answers. I perk up now that the topic has switched and might hold something interesting. “I received my PhD from the University a couple years ago. I was good at what I did. My PhD work in District 2 was well received by the scientific community, and it spawned new research and studies throughout Panem. However, I was in some ways _too good_ at what I did, and I was asked to work in the research and development department for the arenas. A ridiculous amount of work goes into various arenas to make sure that the biology and geology are perfect, and it was a great honor to be chosen. But it disrupted my research, and the Hunger Games have never appealed to me, so I declined the offer and opted to stay at the university. And as you know how these things go, it was less of an offer and more of a reassignment that I had turned down. A couple days later, I found that my pass to travel out of the Capitol had been revoked, my position in the university was dissolved, and I was being reassigned to District 7 as escort since there had been a recent vacancy.”

I stare at her, completely mesmerized. A Capitol citizen who said no to the Capitol? And her punishment was to be reassigned to a position they knew that she would hate. This scientifically-minded woman was reduced to an airheaded, fashion-centered escort in the eyes of the country’s citizens because she didn’t want to work on the arenas.

“And now you’re a wedding planner,” I say.

She laughs dryly. “Yes, I definitely didn’t expect this to be part of my job,” she says. “Dealing with people in the wedding business is a nightmare. I don’t wish this upon even my worst enemies.”

“Well, we thank you for doing it for us—we never could have survived the next couple weeks if we had to do this ourselves,” Pitch says.

“Now that you’re doing what they want, are they going to give you back your travel pass and research?” I ask as I remember that Isolde was punished, too, but eventually her punishment will be lifted. Surely they wouldn’t make a Capitol citizen serve a lifetime in a job she hates.

Daphne shrugs. “That I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose it depends upon how well I do the next couple years.”

“Couple years?” I ask. “Just because you didn’t want to work on the arena?”

“And because I still don’t want to work on the arenas,” she tells me. “I have no interest in that for reasons I won’t get into, but I’m not going to let them force me into that position.”

Damn. That’s . . . awesome. I don’t even have any words for this.

Except, maybe, that she has the ability to say no. There may be repercussions, but a reassignment to an unwanted job is far different from watching a blade slice your tribute’s head off his shoulders or receiving a phone call to say that your family has died in an unexpected and tragic manner. Still, the fact that not everyone is so Hunger Games-obsessed that they think that working on the Hunger Games is the highest honor is just amazing.

“Daphne . . . I advise you to proceed with caution,” Pitch tells her, his expression serious.

She looks back at him with irritation, but after a few seconds says, “I will.”


	69. Chapter 69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for your terrible questions. I hated them all, but they made this chapter much more fun to write.

They put me in a nice summer dress that doesn’t look like anything I’d ever wear in my life, but it’s flattering enough that I can’t complain. Then they apply some natural-looking makeup and style my hair and add a little gloss to my nails. But this is an interview, and the attention will be not on what comes out of my mouth with a far lesser emphasis on what I’m wearing. With my outfit complete, they take Pitch and me to a set that’s a bit different from what we normally get with Caligula. The set mimics a summer afternoon. Flowering bushes are propped up behind the chairs, and behind the bushes is a sky blue backdrop. The ground is gravelly, like a path wandering through somebody’s backyard, with the chairs on a realistic grass material. It’s okay. To me, it’s clearly fake, but maybe the viewers at home will be tricked into thinking we’re actually in some beautiful setting.

The interviewer greets us and tells us that he’s thrilled that we’re able to join him.

“This time, we won’t be interrupted,” he assures/threatens us with a smile, and then he motions for us to have a seat on the quaint little wrought iron bench with a creamy yellow cushion. Pitch and I get situated with him sitting on my right, and then it’s time to begin another damned interview. Pitch puts his left arm around me and whispers into my ear that everything is fine and we’re going to get through this, pulling away and sitting up straight just as Caligula tells us the cameras are turning on.

“Welcome back everyone to another interview with our lovely District 7 couple, Pitch Yassen and Juniper Sadik!” Caligula says to the camera. “We were interrupted during our last interview—but certainly for a _very_ good reason—so they offered to join us today in order to make sure that we get all of our questions answered.”

He turns to us then, the excitement glowing in his eyes. I don’t know how this man gets so damned excited about interviewing us when he clearly detested his own wedding. Then it pops in my mind that maybe he’s _completely high_ all the time, and that’s how he has so much enthusiasm for mundane things. I suppress a grin at this thought and keep my expression as pleasant as possible.

“So I just heard that you two have decided not to get married in District 7 but to have your wedding in the Capitol,” Caligula says. “This is definitely news to us all, but very happy news! Tell us the details—where, when, why, how!”

Well shit, what sort of interview question is that? It’s like the absolute laziest form of questioning somebody. I know his goal is to get us to talk and not to just sit there and answer questions like robots, but the viewers at home want _substance_ , not just news that gets fed to them. Isn’t that what Daphne had said, that they want to be active participants and not have information trickle in to them? I take a breath and give it a shot, hoping that Pitch fix anything stupid I say.

“We are getting married next week at the Royal Hall,” I tell him. “Um. It’s a place where people get married, I guess, so there will probably be somebody there to marry us if things go as planned.” I shrug.

Caligula stares at me, waiting for more. His insistent expression is so completely ridiculous that it causes Pitch to laugh. I don’t even know what to do at this point, with one of them looking at me like a complete dumbass and the other cracking up over nothing.

Pitch stops laughing and says, “Caligula, I don’t think you’re getting more of an answer than that.”

“It appears so,” the interviewer says, pulling himself back together and smiling at us. “Juniper, you are way too concise. Try opening up a little and exploring the conversation a little more.”

 _Thanks for calling me out on national television, you asshole,_ I think, but I just smile at him. If he had done his damned job and given me a proper question, I would have had a little more to work with.

“I really have no idea what else to say on that,” I tell him.

“Alright, alright,” Caligula says. “So you made this decision to stay in the Capitol to get married. You have a date. You have a venue. You might even have somebody who will officiate—” he winks at me as he makes light of my answer to his previous question “—but what’s the wedding going to actually _be_ like?”

“Well, we’re still planning on keeping it small, though we’ve made it a little bigger to accommodate some friends here in the Capitol,” Pitch tells him, and I’m relieved that I don’t have to answer that question because my response would be no better than the one before. “We’re still trying to keep it as simple as possible—the wedding and reception will be at the same place, the guest list is small, those sorts of things.”

“Now that you’ve expanded your wedding into a bigger venue, are you including a wedding party? Juniper, have you chosen bridesmaids?” Caligula asks.

“No wedding party. Still trying to keep it small,” I tell him.

“But certainly your friends will want to join you in celebrating,” he says.

“Yes, that’s why they’re being invited,” I reply. “I don’t think any of them care much about being in a wedding party—it’s just added stress for everyone involved, and it’s not like we aren’t going to include them in pictures just because there’s no wedding party.”

The problem with Caligula is that he doesn’t know when to give up. He thinks that he still has to prod even when there’s no more information to give, like he’s trying to bleed the question dry. And then he gets annoyed when we have nothing else to give him to satiate his curiosity.

“Oh, lovely! You two are having pictures!” Caligula exclaims.

“Yes, of course,” Pitch answers like it was something we would never even _think_ of not considering. But honestly, I hadn’t thought about it until right now. No doubt they’ll make us get a photographer; Daphne probably already has one chosen.

“I do hope that you’ll share these pictures with those of us who aren’t invited,” Caligula says. “I assume I’m not invited?”

“You will have to check with our wedding planner; she’s the one who’s keeping track of everything,” Pitch says politely.

“Oh, you have a wedding planner? Who is that?” Caligula asks.

“Daphne, our District 7 escort,” Pitch answers. “And she’s doing a great job of keeping everything on track.”

“I bet she is. First year as escort, and she’s already really thriving in her position,” the interviewer remarks. I try not to think about why she’s in the position to begin with because it’s not like she actually wants to be there. “You guys were lucky that you have her on your team.”

“Yes, we are,” Pitch answers. “Just as we’re lucky that Tasha and Leander, the stylists for District 7, will be helping us get ready the day of the wedding.”

“Oh, their work is just so wonderful,” Caligula says. “Are they designing your dress, Juniper?”

“Um, no, I went to a shop and chose a dress,” I tell him.

“Is that so? Well! What does it look like?”

“I can’t tell you,” I say to him, hoping that I don’t sound nearly as rude as I feel like I am. Even if I could tell him what the dress looks like, I’m not even sure I’d be able to describe it because it sounded like they were going to alter it significantly.

“Come now,” Caligula says. “Not even a hint?”

“Nope,” I say.

“I’m not supposed to know,” Pitch says before the interviewer can badger me into revealing information I neither know nor care about. One arm is still around my shoulder, but he takes my right hand in his and squeezes it gently.

“Well fine, I suppose we’ll see it in the pictures,” Caligula says. “We _will_ get to see it, right?”

“Yes,” I say.

Caligula nods, satisfied with that answer. But then he continues on with the next question, “What’s the theme of your wedding?”

“Um, theme?” I ask dumbly.

“Yeah, you know some people decide that they’re going to model their weddings after a certain theme,” he says. “Things like their favorite television shows or a certain Hunger Games that stuck out to them or their favorite part of the city.”

That’s damned gross. An arena-themed wedding?

“Oh, um, yeah, I guess ours is going to be marriage themed,” I respond evenly.

“Don’t you worry, Juniper, not every bride has a theme,” Caligula assures me. “I know that it’s pretty overwhelming as it is, so don’t feel like you need to jump on the latest fad. But do you at least have colors?”

“Green and brown,” I tell him.

“That’s—an interesting color choice,” he says, and by the way he says “interesting” I know that he doesn’t like it one bit. I’m not sure what the hell he was expecting, or if there is a certain popular color he was hoping for.

“It reminds us of home,” Pitch explains. “Since our wedding won’t be in District 7, we decided to bring a little bit of our district into the wedding itself.”

“That’s just wonderful,” Caligula says. “I can’t wait to see these pictures. Now, I think the question that we need to ask that we haven’t gotten to yet is, What made you decide to not get married in District 7 but to have your wedding here?”

Pitch’s arm slightly tightens around me. Enough to tell me that everything’s okay and that he is here with me, but not enough to be picked up by the viewers at home. I try to hold onto the fact that if he can pull this off, everything _will_ be okay, and it’s best that I keep my mouth shut.

“I recently reconnected with my daughter, and Juniper and I would like her to be able to be present at the wedding,” Pitch says, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe I should have informed my parents that Pitch has kids from previous “relationships.” But without telling them the nature of these “relationships.”

“Your _daughter_?” Caligula asks, the shock evident on his face. “You didn’t ever mention that you had a daughter.”

“We wanted her to not grow up in the spotlight.” Pitch lies so easily it’s almost unnerving. But, of course, he’s survived a great many interviews and knows how to feed them information. “She lives here in the Capitol, and she wouldn’t be able to join us in District 7 for the wedding.”

“And Juniper . . . did you know he had a daughter?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, and it sounds pretty convincing. It’s only one word, but I’ve botched up plenty of one-worded lies in the past. “She’s very sweet, and we’d love to have here there.”

If Caecilia is watching this right now—which I’m certain she is—she’ll be beside herself to hear that we decided to move our wedding closer to her home so that she can be there, too. It sickens me that we have to lie like this and use her as a tool to keep us safe.

“Wow, I’m just blown away,” Caligula says. “Pitch, you don’t happen to have any more secret children out there, do you?”

Although he says it as though it’s a joke, a surge of anger and hatred sloshes through me. I hate Caligula. I hate him, I hate his questions, I hate his interviews. I hate his pompous personality. I hate his demeaning questions. I hate everything that he stands for, and those who stand behind him. This man has been the official Hunger Games interviewer for many, many years, and he has had hundreds of interviews with victors throughout that time. He knows without a doubt that there are some things you don’t ask victors. He knows that there are topics you avoid because it will open up questions that the Capitol doesn’t ever want mentioned because they don’t want the citizens to know what victors deal with. And despite knowing that the fact that this child has been off the records for so long means that there was probably a damned good reason, he still prods into this gaping wound and tears the flesh open wider.

Pitch hesitates for the briefest of moments, and Caligula hones in on it as though it was a direct invitation for scrutiny. “Pitch, really?” he asks, aghast. “How many?”

My eyes flick off camera for the briefest of moments, and between the bright lights, I see Daphne in the background, arms over her chest, eyes locked onto the interviewer. And the intensity with which she stares at him can only mean that she, like me, would like to tear this man apart, limb from bloody limb. I smile.

Caligula must thing that my reaction is to his question because he says, “Is that funny, Juniper?”

Well shit. I fumble to recover because I wasn’t expecting to be pulled into this conversation, and there’s no way that Pitch can dig me out of this, not when he’s already struggling with answering his own questions.

“Yes,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows at me. “How so?”

“You make it sound like he just has kids packed in a closet somewhere,” I say. “Like I need to go get a coat and I open the door and have to shove children back in before I close the door.”

Caligula laughs but I don’t think he exactly finds it amusing. Not when I pretty much told him that his question is complete shit. But to my relief, it bought Pitch an extra couple seconds to recover.

“I’m afraid I have to be careful, Caligula—I promised my daughter privacy,” Pitch answers. “Otherwise you would have known about her before.”

“Of course, of course. We want to make sure your daughter is comfortable and safe,” the interviewer assures him. But there’s a hungry gleam in his eye begging us to talk more about this forbidden topic. He has his own reputation to protect, however, and he won’t ruin it by prying into the personal history of an eleven-year-old girl. He’ll wait until the authorities have given him permission, and then he’ll drag her out of obscurity and interview her himself. “But she will be at your wedding.”

That was a nice little corner we got backed into. Nobody gets to know about her, but she’ll be in a well-advertised location at a well-advertised time on a well-advertised day. Pitch says, “That’s the plan.”

Caligula nods. “I bet she’s so happy to be included,” he sighs. “Now, Juniper, since your own parents won’t be there, who will be giving you away?”

“Giving me away?” I ask.

Caligula smiles at me like I’m an idiot. I know what he means, but I have no idea how to even begin answering that. I don’t want anyone “giving me away.” That’s such a bullshit idea, and I think my dad might fight whoever tries it. But in absence of my father, who else is there? I certainly don’t want some random Capitolite for the sake of a tradition I don’t care about.

“I mean who is going to be walking you down the aisle?” he asks a little too sweetly like I’m too damned dumb to figure out anything he’s saying.

“We didn’t plan on having that part,” Pitch says before I can throttle the interviewer.

“Keeping it very simple. There’s dancing at least, right?” Caligula asks. “Now that you have a bigger wedding.”

Pitch nods reluctantly. “Yes, there will be dancing,” he says.

“Oh, I bet the two of you are going to be so cute dancing together,” Caligula says. “Are you going to cut the cake together? Wait, you _will_ be having a cake, right?”

“I’m sure there will be cake,” Pitch assures him.

But Caligula only asks, “What does it look like?”

“It hasn’t been baked yet,” I say. And then I add because that probably sounded rude, “We’ll make sure they take pictures of it.”

“I really can’t wait for the pictures. Your wedding is going to be so wonderful, and we really need to see these photos,” he says. “Now, something I’m sure your guests want to know . . . are you listed anywhere?”

“Listed?” Pitch asks, and Caligula throws his hands up in the air in mock exasperation.

“You two are so clueless, it’s a good thing you have Daphne helping you out,” he says with a laugh. Maybe people at home think it’s hilarious, but I don’t. I’ve had enough of his “humor.” I’m afraid he’s going to make us ask him for further explanation, but he says, “When you get married, you choose what gifts you want your guests to bring, and then they can go to the store and buy it for you.”

What an odd tradition. It seems a little presumptuous. Why would I tell people what to buy me?

Pitch and I exchange the briefest confused look, and then Pitch says, “I don’t think we have that tradition in District 7.”

“People don’t bring gifts?” Caligula asks.

“Well, they do, but they don’t tell other people what to bring them,” he tries to explain. But the interviewer just doesn’t seem to understand that it could be possible that other places have different customs. He just shakes his head in surprise. Pitch adds, “We don’t expect anybody to bring anything as it is.”

“But surely you want something,” Caligula says.

“Yes, to be married,” I snap. Pitch tightens his grip on me ever so slightly. Friendly reminder not to murder the interviewer and hang his intestines around his neck. Not that I’m thinking a thing like that.

“Juniper, you have a bit of a temper on you,” the interviewer comments. Then he says to Pitch, “You’re not having second thoughts about this, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” Pitch says flatly.

“It’s not unusual for brides to get a little stressed before the big day,” Caligula tells him. “Hopefully she hasn’t been too snappish.”

Pitch takes a breath while I contemplate how deep I can sink a hatchet into Caligula’s chest.

“No, she’s doing just fine,” Pitch says.

“One of the good things about having a short engagement is that you don’t have time to stress too much,” Caligula says like it’s a big relief. “Of course, most brides prefer to have the extra time to lose weight and get into shape. Not that Juniper’s the type to concern herself with that.”

Holy shit, really?

“Juniper doesn’t need to worry about it,” Pitch says. “She’s fine as she is.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Caligula agrees like he didn’t just insult me two seconds ago. “Now, once you guys are married, what is your plan?”

“Well, we looked into that resort in District 4 you mentioned previously, so I think we have that planned for our honeymoon,” Pitch answers. I guess that information can be given out freely because even if people conveniently decide to schedule their vacations there at the same time, supposedly the resort will be keeping them away.

“That is a great place to go. I think you’ll enjoy it,” Caligula says. “I hear the honeymoon suite is great, and you will no doubt enjoy it. But just make sure to take a break and go spend some time on the beach.” He laughs.

I think I really _will_ puke on myself. This guy can get away with saying stuff like this?

“Thanks for the advice,” Pitch says easily, almost like it doesn’t bother him that Caligula is a disgusting creep. But there’s an edge to his voice, and I know that this interview is going on far too long for even someone as patient as Pitch.

I find myself glancing towards Daphne for another brief second. She glowers at the ground, arms still over her chest. Did her sources not prepare her for the interview to go over like this? Was that intentional, or has Caligula just gone out of control?

“So you have many changes for you in the near future. You’re getting married. You have a daughter. Where are you two going to live—here, or in the Capitol?” Caligula asks.

“We need to work that out with my daughter’s mother,” Pitch answers. I dread the very thought of having to deal with Faustina, but I know that if she were a reasonable woman, Pitch would be right to discuss it with her. She’s not, but the viewers at home have no way of knowing this. “But we plan on spending time in both places.”

“Once you two are back in District 7, which house are you going to live in?” he asks. “You have two houses between you two, and certainly you don’t want to live separately.”

“We’ll have to figure that out,” Pitch answers. “My house gets a little more sunlight in the mornings, but Juniper’s has a greener lawn. Maybe we’ll end up living in both.”

I sit there trying to mentally compare the two lawns before I realize that Pitch is completely bullshitting things because the “lawns” are small, dusty patches of grass that no one cares about before giving way to dirt and trees.

“Now, Juniper, do you plan no taking Pitch’s last name?” Caligula asks.

“No,” I tell him. And then because I think I should say some more: “I do not plan on it.”

“It might get a little confusing,” Pitch explains to the interviewer. “Especially when we end up mentoring the same year.”

“Oh, right, right. How do you think that will work? Mentoring together, I mean?” Caligula asks. “Do you think that your marriage will affect your ability to mentor tributes?”

Pitch shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I think it’ll be fine.”

“What about last year? From what I understand, your love was blossoming into what it is today but it affected your ability to take care of your tributes,” says Caligula.

Ugh. I had hoped that that would be put behind us. Our “love” did not affect our mentoring in any manner, but Lala did. It was because of that terrible escort that we had to make up rumors about ourselves and say that she was the one who held the district together. And it hurt. To know that we suffered so much as we tried to help our twelve-year-old tributes through the arena and then had to deny everything we felt was painful. But we did it anyhow because it was the only thing that would keep Lala from having me arrested for assault. I don’t want this to be returning to me year after year after year. But, of course, it doesn’t matter what I want. Still I hope for a way to quash this rumor so that it doesn’t keep resurfacing.

“Last year was a bit of an adjustment period,” Pitch answers. I don’t know what else he can say, and though Caligula looks at him eager for more, he won’t be getting more information out of him.

“So you don’t think there will be any problem in the future when you both have to mentor? The competition won’t put a strain on your marriage?” Caligula asks. “I had a friend who was on one soccer team and his husband was on another, and whew! Things really got heated up when those teams played against each other.”

Have I mentioned how much I hate this man? To even compare the deaths of children to a soccer match is just beyond disgusting.

“No, neither Juniper nor I are competitive like that,” Pitch answers. “We want what’s best for our tributes.”

“I hope that works out for you. You know that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, right?” Caligula asks.

“Well, we beat the odds before so I’m sure we can do it again,” Pitch replies.

“Of course you will,” Caligula agrees like he didn’t just tell a couple on the threshold of their wedding that they have a fifty percent chance of their marriage falling to pieces at some point in their lifetime. “Now, just enough time for a final question or two. You are starting out a new part of your life. Are you going to miss being single?”

“No,” we answer in unison.

Caligula laughs. “Pitch, not even you? I know you’ve enjoyed the single life over the years, and now you have to settle down with one woman,” he says.

Ugh. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this man’s questions anymore, but to call Pitch out for something like that—even if he slept around out of his own free will—during an interview about his wedding is just tacky. Even if Daphne and Pitch thought it was a possibility that it could come up, it doesn’t make the question any easier to digest.

“I don’t ‘have’ to settle down with anyone. I’m choosing to,” Pitch tells him.

“What about her really made you decide that she’s the one. She’s the one you’re going to change your whole outlook on life for?” Caligula asks.

“I don’t think I have an answer for that, Caligula,” Pitch says after a moment of thought. “I could sit here and list all the qualities I admire, but I know that’s not what you’re asking. All I can say is that I want to spend the rest of my life with Juniper and no one else.”

“And you shall. You two are just a perfect couple,” Caligula says, shaking his head in admiration of the relationship he just tried to skin alive for the audience at home. Not that he cares what he has done here. “Thank you two for being here tonight. It was a pleasure to interview you, and I wish you the best in your upcoming marriage.”

“Thank you,” Pitch answers, and I just mouth the words and try to smile.

“I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today. It’s been wonderful to speak with our couple here, and I hope you all enjoyed the program.”

The cameras turn off, the crew begins to move about and talk, and Caligula turns to us and thanks us once more for being here. I stand up and Pitch follows me as I make a beeline towards the changing room to put on my clothes. He waits outside the door, and when I come back out, he grabs my hand and the two of us head into the hallway before anyone can stop us.


	70. Chapter 70

Pitch leads me down the hallway and into a single-stall bathroom off the main corridor where he locks the door behind us. He pulls me into his arms and we stand there holding each other, our hearts thumping rapidly with anger and disgust and everything else.

That was an absolutely wretched interview. It was by far the worst one I have been a part of. I’m not sure what the hell Caligula’s problem was, but every single bit of it was painful and twisted. Even the more mundane questions were a challenge to get through. I close my eyes and focus on Pitch’s embrace.

“We’re going to leave, go outside, and find a cab,” he tells me after a moment. His voice is soft, reassuring. “You did fine. We did fine. But we’re not going to think about it right now. We’re need to leave here happily and move on with our day.”

I nod. “Okay,” I answer. But we don’t move right away. We’re recharging, and it takes some time to be emotionally ready to face the world again.

At last he loosens his hold on me, and I do the same.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Sure, why not?” I mumble. He kisses my forehead and smooths out my hair. Then we gather our wits and leave the safety of the bathroom. The hallway is mercifully empty, and he clasps my hand in his and the two of us walk out with our heads held high.

We step out of the cab onto the sidewalk in front of Maximus’ house and walk up the pathway. Neither of us have said anything about the interview. I don’t even ask him if he plans on re-watching it to learn from our mistakes. The questions Caligula asks went well beyond mere intrusion; to call Pitch out for having children was completely inhumane. To treat us like idiots for not understanding every aspect of Capitol weddings or not having an answer he wanted was sick.

Before I reach out to press the doorbell, I hear voices from inside. Nothing I can really make out or distinguish, but it’s more than just Esther, Maximus, and Caecilia. I hesitate; I’m not looking forward to meeting Maximus’ friends or whatever, but we need to get Caecilia and get home. My finger presses the button, and somewhere inside the house comes the sound of a chime. Then there’s raised voices, footsteps, and finally Esther opens the door.

“Come inside,” she says as she opens the door wide enough for us. Pitch and I exchange a look, and she says, “Don’t worry—it’s just Elijah and Ferrer.”

The house is small and cozy. Academic textbooks fill every surface, but I can’t focus well enough to read any of the titles. Esther leads us down a long hallway into a room towards the back of the house. Televisions cover the walls, their silent black screens looming over us.

“Maximus is a big gamer,” she tells me. When I look at her in confusion, she clarifies, “He loves to play video games.”

Oh, right. And apparently he needs like twelve televisions to do so. Still, it’s an impressive room and quite comfortable despite the fact that the blinds are drawn and we’re surrounded by cold technology. There’s enough room for people to sit down on a wide variety of couches and chairs. Ferrer and Maximus are conversing, and Caecilia appears to be explaining something to Elijah, but they all look up at us as soon as we appear. None of them, not even Caecilia, look happy, and I wonder if we did something wrong. Then I remember that we technically did—we had an absolutely abysmal interview. But surely we weren’t _that_ terrible to earn such a reaction.

Only Esther appears upbeat. She tells us to sit down and pours us water from a pitcher on a table near a wall. Pitch and I settle into a couch and she hands us our glasses.

“We’re just here to celebrate your shitty interview,” Elijah explains, breaking through the silence in the room.

“Thanks, Elijah, I always knew I could count on you,” Pitch says flatly.

“Anytime,” Elijah answers.

Maximus stands up. “I’m going to get started on dinner. Caecilia, would you care to give me a hand?” he asks as he turns to the girl. She smiles and jumps to her feet with a promise to Elijah that she’ll finish her story later. Then she catches up with Maximus and they head out of the room to leave us to our own discussion.

Nobody says anything. Probably because there’s no place to really begin to express how terrible that interview actually was. The only thing I can hope is that people viewing it wouldn’t think that Pitch and I are complete morons and that they realize that Caligula’s questions were completely inappropriate.

“If we made a drinking game out of that interview and took a shot every time he insulted one or the other of you, we’d be completely wasted,” Elijah says. He takes a drink of his soda and sets the can back on the table next to where he sits on the couch.

Ferrer shoots an irritated look at Elijah, then says to Pitch and me, “You guys did the best you could with those questions.”

Nice of him to say that, but it does little to ease my mind when we live in a world where that behavior is not just tolerated but encouraged.

“How did it come across?” Pitch asks.

“I think we’re probably too biased to answer that,” Ferrer tells him. “We know that his questions were not appropriate for a pre-wedding interview, but it’s hard to say if people watching would think the same.”

“Maybe it’s because Maximus knows me and sees what it’s like to be a victor, but he wasn’t impressed with the questions,” Esther chimes in. “Even Caecilia realized that Caligula wasn’t being nice to you guys.”

“Well if the kid can figure it out, I hope that others can, too,” Elijah says. “Then again, she has a better head on her shoulders than most of the people I’ve met in this city.”

Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t care what the Capitol viewers think about anything that happens to me, but right now we’re in a precarious position. Our actions are being manipulated by the Capitol itself, and we have to figure out how to respond and maneuver to these sudden and unexpected changes while not causing anyone great offense. But it still begs the question: Who is doing this and why?

“Does Caligula make up his own questions, or does somebody make them up for him?” I ask.

“A little of both,” Ferrer answers. “Depending on the interview, he’s sometimes told what topics to cover or what points to hit on. But the questions tend to be his own.”

But from what I’ve seen of Caligula, he normally tries to present himself as someone who is a friend of whoever he’s interviewing, particularly when he sees that they struggle with being in the spotlight. This is especially evident in his tribute interviews, in which he tries to match his questions to the personality and experience of the tribute. That was clearly not the case here. He had no mercy, and he was perfectly fine to decimate us without batting an eye.

“Is he going insane?” I ask. “I mean, he’s asked some pretty invasive stuff in the past, but this was really crazy.”

“It’s pretty typical to ask rude questions when it comes to marriage,” Ferrer says. “When Aella, my first wife, and I married, people asked many of the same annoying questions about venue and food and dress. Even got into more invasive topics like asking about the budget and critiquing some of our choices. I think that’s pretty standard for any wedding, and whether you’re asked by friends or strangers, people expect a courteous response. So the fact that he thought he could ask you things that you didn’t think were appropriate doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yes, but having great-aunt Gertrude wonder why your wife isn’t wearing a white dress is far different than being grilled about it on national television,” Elijah says. “These damned interviews are nothing but an invasion of privacy.”

“I’m not disagreeing, only saying that some of these questions are typical for weddings,” Ferrer says. “And Caligula, well, I imagine that he was under pressure from someone above him to ask certain questions.”

Pitch shakes his head. “He had absolutely no remorse for what he said,” he says. “He could have covered many of those same topics more tactfully.” Not that there is a tactful way to point out to the entire country that Pitch has a reputation for sleeping around—especially when it didn’t seem to be that well-known of an issue beforehand. But there were some questions that certainly could have been played off much better, and people would have been just as entertained to know that we have no clue what’s going on with most of our wedding planning without us looking like complete morons.

“It doesn’t make sense. When Caligula interviewed Maximus and me a few weeks ago, he was nothing but polite!” Esther says.

“Maximus isn’t a victor,” Ferrer reminds her. “Caligula likely respects him more for that reason.”

Esther shakes her head and stares down at her hands. She’s beginning to see how her upcoming marriage to a Capitol citizen is protecting her from the brutality of victor life. It wasn’t in the way she was anticipating, I’m sure, but it’s a benefit nonetheless.

Before we can get further into conversation, Maximus sticks his head into the room. “Hey, Esther, can I borrow you for a second?” he asks.

She nods and stands up. Maximus doesn’t look at us as he leads her out of the room.

“Do you have future interviews with Caligula?” Ferrer asks us.

“We have one more before the wedding. I assume it’s with Caligula,” Pitch says. “Our itinerary stops there, so I’m not certain what else is planned before the honeymoon.”

“So you went with District 4 for your honeymoon, huh?” Elijah asks. “Did you get a choice in that?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “We got a choice between the beach, some mountains, and an open field.”

“An open field sounds very romantic,” he says. “Do they just drive you out there and leave you?”

“All of the districts have resorts, but not all of them have quite the same appeal to the Capitol crowd,” Ferrer explains to him. “But I’m sure there are some who would appreciate being out in the middle of nowhere. City life is not for everyone, even if they were born here.”

“They told us we had to choose one of them,” I explain. “Daphne recommended District 4, so we just went with her recommendation.”

This brings up a bit of a discussion about which resort would have been the best. Mostly it’s Ferrer and Elijah bantering back and forth with Pitch’s occasional input. I wondered why Esther had invited these two over, but now I see that despite Pitch’s dislike of Elijah’s interview skills and general smart-ass attitude, and despite the fact that Ferrer seems to be a very typical Career victor, they’re friends. Or as friend-like as most victors get. If Pitch’s and my relationship is any evidence, victors don’t really have typical friendships; it’s like we can’t figure out how to interact with these people whose situations match our own.

Esther shuffles into the room and looks at the four of us. “There’s been a bit of a problem,” she says hesitantly as she sits down in her chair.

My chest tightens and I stare at her, silently begging her to reveal that dinner has burnt and we need to think of plan B. But Esther doesn’t have a sense of humor like that, and the seriousness in her brown eyes tells me that there really is a problem and none of us are going to like it.

“Some girl came forward and said that she’s your daughter, Pitch,” Esther says.

Pitch stares at her for a moment and then puts his face in his hands. I think for a second he might actually be crying, but when he looks up again, it’s only pure and utter defeat that blankets his expression. He doesn’t respond to Esther and I wonder if he’s considering calling off the wedding. But eventually he manages to ask, “How do I turn on the television?”

I wonder how many kids he really has, and if some of their parents have raised them knowing that Pitch is their father, like Caecilia. And how many of them want to reconnect with their long-lost parent. Now would be the perfect time to make that connection when the doors are wide open.

Esther shows Pitch the right remote to control the main screen, and walks him through how to turn it on and which channel to change it to. Sure enough, there is a news reporter, and below him is a banner that reads “Breaking News.” We have to wait several minutes for him to reveal any actual information besides the fact that a girl supposedly came forward as Pitch’s daughter.

“For those of you just joining us, eight-year-old Neptune Corvinus—”

Before the reporter can get the rest of the sentence out, I start laughing. At first it’s more of a huff, but then it turns into full laughter, and then I can’t stop myself. Nobody else is laughing. In fact, they’re staring at me because the situation is _clearly_ not funny, and yet it is. Who on earth would ever have predicted that our lives would turn into this soap opera with one terrible thing after another, leaving behind this openness inside my chest that just grows wider and wider? How the hell are we supposed to deal with this? What idiots we are for leaving ourselves open for this attack. Then the next thing I know I’m crying hysterically, my head buried in my arms and my face in the couch cushion so that no one can see me even though it’s very clear that I’m sobbing. That seems to jar Pitch out of his stupor, and he reaches over and puts a hand on my back.

“She’s not my kid,” I hear him explain to the other victors. “Her older brother is. She must’ve heard us talking the other day when we were with her parents and misunderstood.”

Misunderstood? Hell no, that girl didn’t misunderstand a single damned thing. She saw an opportunity and she took it. I manage to pull myself together enough to say, “She heard the entire conversation. She didn’t misunderstand.” And then I go back to crying, my whole body shaking with the effort.

Pitch doesn’t respond for a moment. Maybe he was trying to tell himself that the girl misunderstood because that would have been better than the alternative: this eight-year-old kid thought now would be a good time to screw people over. But then he says, “Juniper and I met her at a party once—no, twice; Caecilia was with us the second time—and she’s, um, very enthusiastic about the Hunger Games.”

“Sh-she was jealous of C-Caecilia,” I find myself saying between sobs. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time because I figured that any Capitol kid would be envious of a girl finding out that her dad was a victor, but now I wonder how far that jealous streak went.

When nobody can say anything to that, Pitch tells me, “C’mon,” and helps me to my feet. Then he asks Esther where the bathroom is, and leads me out of the room and down the hallway towards the toilet. Once inside, he closes the door behind us, holds me, and kisses my forehead. But he says nothing to get me to stop crying, nor does he tell me that everything will be okay. It probably won’t be okay at this point, and what’s the use of lying to ourselves? He grabs a tissue and starts trying to dry my cheeks, and then he gives me another one to blow my nose so I stop smearing snot on his shirt. Once I’m more in control of myself, I wet a third tissue in the sink and try to blot out the tears and mucous on his shirt. He stops me, cups my chin in his hands, and says, “I love you, Juniper.” I nod to acknowledge that I heard, and he kisses me on the lips. I’d like to stay here forever, or at least a little longer, but the kiss is brief because we need to clean up and move on. The world isn’t going to stop just because we want it to.

“Are you okay?” Esther asks when we reemerge from the bathroom and sit back down on the couch.

“Oh, don’t worry about us. One or the other has a breakdown every day, sometimes twice a day,” I tell her nonchalantly. “We get used to it.”

She stares at me blankly, and I wonder if I’ve crossed a line, so I avert my eyes and look at one of the many television screens where I accidentally catch a glimpse of my own reflection. I look exhausted. No. Dead. I look dead. There’s nothing alive in me right now. When and where did I die? What was the final twig that caused me to collapse under the weight of everything piled up on me right now? Was it the “breaking news” or something long ago and I only now realized my own mortality?

Maximus brings out dinner and people start to relax, if only a little. Somebody scoops food onto a plate and puts it in my hands; I barely feel its weight on my lap. But the dead don’t eat, and I just sit there while everyone compliments the chefs and tells Maximus and Caecilia how great dinner is. Pitch says something which I think is trying to encourage me, but I can’t make out what it is and I can’t make my mouth open to ask him to repeat it. Dinner ends at some point. Probably. The plate is no longer in my hands, and I didn’t move so I know that I didn’t throw it somewhere. Pitch talks to me, and then Caecilia’s voice comes out of nowhere as she starts chatting with someone, but she isn’t talking to me. After a few minutes I realize that Pitch isn’t sitting next to me at all. I blink and look at the spot on the couch he had been. A moment later, Esther sits down next to me. She says my name. I hear it, but I can’t really understand what it means until several long seconds afterwards. She doesn’t say it again, nor does she say anything else. Time of some quantity passes. There’s movement somewhere as people walk back and forth, maybe. Voices that aren’t really trying to engage me. Finally Esther stands up, and Pitch sits back down. He takes my hand in his and says something to me, but it might as well be gibberish. His breath smells vaguely of alcohol, which perplexes me, but not enough that I do anything about it. More time passes. He finally helps me to my feet, and he and Caecilia and I leave the house and get into a car waiting out front.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a delay getting this out - had to do a fair bit of editing. Might be slow to get the next couple out for the same reason, we'll see. Dialogue is hard.


	71. Chapter 71

I am suddenly aware that I am standing under a fountain of cold water, and it’s only the unexpected chill that jars me out of my catatonic state. I blink, disoriented, and look around me. I’m in my shower, and Pitch is here, too. I panic and wonder what the hell happened that we’d be showering together, but then I realize that we’re both fully clothed except for our shoes and socks. I shiver.

The water turns warmer as Pitch reaches over and adjusts the dials. Then his attention returns to me.

“You were having trouble,” he explains to me, as though that’s really an explanation. “Are you okay?”

I can’t answer that at first, but finally I force myself to nod. And then make words. “Yes. I think so,” I tell him. But I’m not sure if that’s the truth.

Although the cold water did the trick to bring me back, the warm water keeps me from leaving. It’s soothing, calming. And then I realize that it’s not the water that calms me but Pitch’s firm grasp that holds me close to him to keep me from falling on the shower floor.

“Juniper, I need you to stay with me,” he says, his eyes on mine. “We’re going to get through this, but we have to stay together, okay? I need you.”

He’s echoing what I told him when Sage was killed. I pause to feel the water falling against my skin and then I nod.

“Okay,” I answer. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he tells me. “But we have to hold ourselves together.”

He reaches over and turns the water off before grabbing towels off the rack. The entire time, he keeps his arm around me. He hands me one towel and keeps the other for himself. “Are you okay to stand on your own?” he asks. When I tell him yes, then he releases me so he can start drying off his clothes. I don’t know why. It’s not like he can’t just change into something else.

I excuse myself to change in the bedroom, and he waits patiently in the bathroom while I strip off the soaking clothing, dry myself off, and pull on comfortable pajamas. Then we trade places, and he changes while I wring out my clothes in the shower and hang them to dry.

“We need to talk with Caecilia,” he says as he joins me. His hands twist the fabric of his shirt, and water splatters to the ground. “I can’t tell her everything, but she needs to know what’s going on. I want you to be there, too.”

So once things are situated in the bathroom, we find Caecilia in the library and ask her to join us in the sitting room. I make us hot chocolate while Pitch shifts uneasily in his seat on the couch and Caecilia watches him anxiously for what she surely knows is a pretty important talk that’s coming up. When I pass out the mugs and sit down in the armchair, Pitch gathers himself together and begins.

“Caecilia, I don’t know how much you’re aware of what went on tonight, so I’d like to talk with you about that,” he says to her. The girl looks up at him, hot chocolate all but abandoned in her hands.

“Uncle Max and I were listening to the news while we cooked,” she tells him. 

“I figured,” he says. “During the interview, I mentioned that I wanted to protect your privacy. It is of my opinion that you should not be dragged out and made a spectacle of just because you’re my daughter. You should be allowed to live a normal life without being concerned about media attention or anything like that. However, in doing so I inadvertently allowed room for others to come forward and say that they were my daughter, even if they aren’t.”

“Is Neptune really your daughter?”

“No. She is not my daughter,” he says. “I don’t know why she said that she is. Her older brother is my son, however, so I imagine that it might have started there somewhere.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asks him.

He exhales. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he says. “But I don’t want you to worry about that; I’ll take care of things.”

“You don’t have to do any more interviews, though, right?” she asks him. Now she glances briefly at me before returning her attention back to her father.

“Oh, they might get us to do another one before the wedding,” he says, straining to pretend like there’s not a problem with us getting before the camera again.

But Caecilia sees through it. Her eyes narrow and she says, “Please don’t. Normally I like watching interviews but Caligula was mean.”

“Yes, it wasn’t one of the best interviews,” Pitch agrees. “But I’m sure the next one will be just fine.”

She takes this in and sips her hot chocolate thoughtfully. When she lowers the mug, she says, “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Am I?” he asks with surprise.

“That interview was _bad_ ,” she says. “Kayleee, my friend—who doesn’t know your my father, by the way—she texted me during the interview and told me that it was really weird. She said Caligula was brutal. Anyway, it was bad, and now you’re telling me that the next one will be good, but you don’t think so. It’s pretty obvious.”

“I’m not eager for the next one,” he admits. “But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be fine.”

“But you don’t believe it,” she says.

Pitch studies her curiously. Caecilia doesn’t fall so easily for the typical adult ruses, and she can’t be easily duped with a few reassurances that everything will be fine. I bit the inside of my cheek and suppress a smile as I watch the two of them stare each other down.

My cell phone suddenly rings, and I nearly fall out of the chair in surprise. Everyone looks up as I search around for my purse and finally find it behind the chair. I dig out the phone and look at the name of the incoming call.

“My parents,” I say, and head directly into the bedroom. Behind me, I hear Pitch telling Caecilia that we need to talk with my parents and that he’ll be right back. I sit down on the bed, cross my legs, and hit the “call accept” button. Pitch closes the door and joins me on the bed.

“Hello?” I ask as I switch the phone to speaker mode.

“Juniper?” comes Dad’s voice. Uh-oh. I’ve never feared speaking with my father, but apprehension prickles me to know that he has been the one to make the phone call and not my mother.

I close my eyes. “Yes?”

“Honey, we need to talk,” he says. “Is Pitch there?”

“I’m here,” Pitch says.

“Pitch, I’d like to talk with my daughter alone,” he says.

My stomach clenches but I press a button on my phone and let my dad know that he’s no longer on speaker. Pitch catches my eye for the briefest of moments before I turn and look at the comforter beneath me. He moves away and begins to busy himself with fluffing pillows, something we do pretty much never.

“June, your mother and I saw the interview and we’re . . . well, we can say that you and Pitch should have been treated with more respect,” he begins, and I allow myself to relax, if only the slightest bit. I’m not sure why Pitch doesn’t get included in this and had to step away. He eyes me from the head of the bed, but I turn my attention back to the call. “I know it’s hard to be in the public’s eye, and you and Pitch have had enough pressure put on you over the last couple weeks. . . .

“But honey, I know that you love Pitch, but I’m really concerned about this relationship,” he continues. I grit my teeth and pick at a loose thread on the comforter as I brace myself for a lecture. _This_ is why he didn’t want Pitch involved. He might be sorry that we had to endure that interview, but his concerns exceed his sympathy for the situation. Lecturing has always been my dad’s specialty. Whenever my parents thought I needed some sense talked into me, they sent my dad to do the talking. And I don’t think he’d make a phone call like this if my mom wasn’t in full agreement. “We were willing to overlook the age difference, but to know that he has children from other relationships and that he leads a life of promiscuity. . . . June, honey, that isn’t something he’s just going to change because you have a document with a Capitol seal. That’s not what we want for you. You deserve better than that.”

Tears fill up in my eyes. Not the sort that follow hysterical laughter, or the ones sparked from anger. No, these tears burn my eyes and sting my lids as I listen to my parents tell me that the one person who I want to be with the most is not good enough for me because they have been taken by the Capitol’s lies. And how can I convince him otherwise when these lies are woven through with the truth?

Pitch watches me carefully from where he’s stopped bothering to fluff the pillows, but I can’t look at him. I see him out of the corner of my eye, but there’s no way I can bring him into this conversation when my dad is blaming him like this.

“Dad? Please?” I say.

“Juniper, you’re nineteen years old. I know that you’re far more mature than other girls your age. You always have been, even when you were little,” Dad continues. “But you’re still barely an adult, and you can’t make these sorts of adult decisions until you get more experience in life. It’s only going to hurt you. Pitch is a nice man, I don’t want you to think that I mean otherwise, but you’re rushing into this without thinking it through. Come back home, wait a year, and then see if you still want to marry him. Otherwise there are plenty of other nice young men who—”

“Dad?” I say again before he can finish. He pauses, and I assume that means that he’s giving me permission to speak. “I love you, but can we talk about this when I get back to District 7?”

“You’ll be married by then,” Dad says. “We need to talk about this now.”

I sniffle and wipe the tears off my cheeks with the hem of my sweatshirt sleeve. I guess I’m not going to be getting out of this that easily. My parents must be pretty damned adamant to discourage me from marrying him. Can’t they see that the information presented on television isn’t the full truth and that what truth there is has been twisted? Can’t they see that this Capitol propaganda doesn’t represent reality? I clear my throat.

“I think you misunderstood the interview,” I tell him. Pitch exhales sharply and leans back against the wall. I don’t know how much he hears of the conversation. When I look over at him, he must realize that maybe he shouldn’t be listening into a conversation that’s private, because he apologizes and heads towards the bathroom.

“I know that it wasn’t a nice interview and that they didn’t paint a very flattering picture of you two,” Dad says carefully. “But the fact remains that his lifestyle is just going to hurt you.”

Of course. My parents really _don’t_ understand. Since I returned home from the arena, they’ve tried. They have really, really tried. But they can’t even begin to fathom the shit I’ve gone through, and though they know that what they see on television is only a sliver of what happens in reality, they cannot imagine what’s going on behind the scenes. And how could they when I’ve never told them? I’ve kept the truth guarded over the last two years because I didn’t want to hurt them. And they sent me away to school because they didn’t understand what I was going through and thought that I was still the same Juniper I was the day I took my place on stage. 

When we came back from the Capitol last year, I said very little to them. They knew that Pitch and I were “together” because the Capitol had told them through the interviews, but I never put enough energy into explaining to them how it unfolded because I didn’t want them to worry about me. And as a result, they have relied on the Capitol to paint a picture of our relationship. If I had told them what I had experienced in more detail, and if I had taken the time to explain to them that I liked Pitch for more reasons than the fact that he’s nice to me, maybe they wouldn’t be so concerned about us being together. They could have understood that Pitch’s past isn’t going to pose problems like it would were this a more traditional marriage.

“I’m still marrying him,” I say.

“June, please. Listen to reason,” he says. “He admitted that he has a history of sleeping around with other women. That sort of behavior doesn’t just vanish. He might say that he loves you, but—”

“He _does_ love me,” I say, distinctly aware that I sound just as dumb as the foolish girl Dad thinks I am. I wish I could take back the words, but they’re already out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“Why? Because he told you?” Dad pleads. “June, who knows how many other women he’s told that to?”

But he hasn’t. Or maybe he has. I don’t care. I know that Pitch loves me not because he told me but because of how he cares for me. The gestures, the teasing, the way he tries to protect me even if he knows that he can’t. But more than that, he _trusts_ me. Maybe he’s thrown around his love to other women in his life, but how often has he given people his trust? How many people have held him as he breaks down because a past he never wanted has caught up with him? And honestly, I don’t care if he isn’t romantically “head over heels” in love with me. I just want to be with him, romance or not.

How do I explain that to my dad?

Pitch emerges from the bathroom and hands me a box of tissues. I pull one out and clench it in my fingers for a moment before running it under my nose.

“Even if he does, June, even if he’s given up pursuing other women, I can’t bear to think that he might betray you,” Dad says.

Pitch freezes. The phone might not be on speaker, but it’s definitely loud enough that when Pitch is this close, it doesn’t matter. His mouth opens and then closes quickly again.

Anger seizes me, and the tears dry up.

“Dad?! What the hell?” I demand.

“Honey, listen—”

“That was a low blow,” I snap. “You can’t use what happens in the arena against somebody like that.”

“Honey, I didn’t mean it like—”

“I’m not sure _how_ you mean it then,” I cut him off again. “He did what he had to do in order to live. So did I. So did all the victors.”

My dad sighs. He chose the wrong damned thing to bring up. What Pitch did in the arena in order to survive might not have been noble by any means, but that doesn’t mean that it should be held against him seventeen years later in an entirely different situation. That’s like preemptively removing all sharp objects from the house for the rest of my life because I killed a few kids in the arena.

Pitch slumps onto the bed and stares down at the carpet. His eyes flick back and forth as though he’s reading something in the fibers, but he says nothing to me.

“Dad, I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, but can you trust me? Just this once?” I ask coldly. “And then when we come back, Pitch and I will have that discussion with you. In person, without having to worry about the phone call dropping or being interrupted or anything like that.”

My father says nothing for a long moment. He might be finally understanding why I’m so hesitant to talk with him right now. My previous attempts to hint that the line might be bugged went unheard because his message was more important than what I had to say, but now he realizes that he might not have the full picture. He then says, “Of course, June. I wish you two the best of luck, and I hope to see you soon.”

“Thank you, Dad,” I say, irritation still present but less audible. I force myself to take a deep breath and add, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says.

And then I hang up the phone, roll over onto my stomach, plant my face in the nearest pillow, and scream to allow the anger to come up from deep within me.


	72. Chapter 72

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little uncomfortable here. tl;dr at the end.

The next morning, Tasha and Leander come over to discuss our hair and makeup and clothing not just for the wedding but for the couple of dinners we’ll have in the days preceding it. Caecilia is allowed to listen in on the meeting because there’s no great secret involved, so she sits poised prim and proper on the couch on the other side of Pitch.

The stylists lay out what times we’re supposed to meet and where, what colors we’ll be wearing for the various dinners, how they envision us sitting together, etc. At one point, they tell Pitch that he’s going to have to grow a “respectable beard” between now and the wedding, and then Leander gives Pitch some cream or another that’s supposed to stimulate beard growth. When I ask what the point is of that, they say that they want to make sure that everyone knows we represent District 7.

“You want him to look like a stereotypical lumberjack?” I ask with a snort. “You going to put him in plaid, too?”

“Well, he won’t look _that_ stereotypical,” Leander reassures me. I don’t bother telling they stylists that most people in District 7 don’t look like that; I don’t want to offend them too much. Not because I’m afraid of them but because they’ve always tried to be decent towards me, and I’d like to think that I’m not a complete jerk.

“Don’t worry. You two will be very classy,” Tasha says. “Everyone will be quite envious of you both on your wedding day.”

Around noon they announce that tomorrow will be the Presentation of the Victor. It’s the only thing that Caecilia can talk about as she watches the television, her books abandoned by her side. Pitch glances at me when she rambles about it, and I pretend that I don’t notice. I can’t think too much about tomorrow night. And, anyway, we have more pressing concerns: Pitch and I have to go back to Neptune’s house and try to talk some reason into her and her family.

We arrive back to Tatiana’s joyous household in the early afternoon. It’s not until we’re out of the cab with the door closed do we realize that the couple people we thought were just walking by the house are really members of the press, camera and microphone in hand. We calmly walk up the path and climb the front porch steps. Our presence seems to have called other reporters and paparazzi out of the woodwork because more are now appearing.

“We should have met somewhere else,” Pitch mutters under his breath as he tries not to look at them. Fortunately the door opens soon enough and we’re ordered, more than told, to get inside. The moment we step in, Tatiana slams the door shut and locks it.

The house looks vastly different than it did the last time we were here, and it takes a second to realize that it’s because every shutter in the house is closed, and no natural light has managed to get through the wooden slats. Tatiana stares at us with irritation. Dark shadows circle her eyes, and she doesn’t have a scrap of makeup on. She almost looks normal. She motions us to sit down on the couch, which we do.

“At this point, I’ll give her to you if you take her,” the woman says, and I’m not certain if she’s serious.

“Tatiana—” Pitch starts, but she just throws her head back and barks out a laugh.

“Why the hell do I drink?” she asks no one in particular. Then she sits down in a chair—throws herself down, would be the better description—and stares at us. “Plinius is threatening me with divorce.

I have absolutely zero sympathy for this woman. None. I hate her and her entire fucked-up family. Even when she buries her face in her long, slender fingers and starts to cry, I don’t feel a damned thing about her except irritation. I glance at Pitch. He stares at her for several seconds before turning to me with a shrug.

At last she looks up at us, takes a tissue out of her pocket and dabs at her eyes and nose, and then heaves a sigh.

“It’s days like these that make me appreciate the time we spent together,” she says to Pitch. He shifts uneasily and doesn’t look at me. She adds, “When we’d lie together for hours and everything was right in the world.”

Pitch clears his throat. “Can we talk about Neptune?” he asks.

“You were always so stoic. Wouldn’t say a thing about yourself, not even when I tried to coax it out of you,” she reminisces. “Yet you always knew the right thing to say to me anyhow. And when we’d make love, all the concerns didn’t matter.”

Pitch clenches his jaw and watches her. I suppose he’s going to wait for her stroll down memory lane to end, but I won’t.

“Hey, we need to deal with your kid before she shows up at our apartment and we have to shut the door in her face,” I state.

Tatiana nods. “Yes, yes. Neptune has always been a handful. I’m not sure how Plinius thought that Pliny was his child when it was clear that he takes so much after you, Pitch. No, Neptune is much like her dad. Has always been a daddy’s girl.”

Right, okay. This is not productive. All Tatiana wants to do is sit here and dream about Pitch, but we need to actually do _something_ that will address the issue at hand. I don’t think I can stomach this conversation anymore.

“You know, I think Pitch and I will be going now,” I say as I stand up. Pitch takes my lead and stands up as well.

“Please,” she says, extending a hand to us. “We need to deal with this problem.”

“That’s what we were trying to do,” Pitch tells her. She looks at him imploringly, and he sighs and sits back down on the couch. I lower myself next to him, but I’m not nearly as kind as Pitch is, and I hope this woman understands that.

Plinius walks down the stairs without the slightest acknowledgement of our presence and comes into the sitting room. The powder on his face is creased where his features have furrowed and frowned. He says nothing as he takes a seat across from Pitch and me, but not too close to his wife.

“Well I hope you’re happy with this situation,” Plinius says to Pitch, his cold eyes boring into him. “One of my children is yours, and the other wants to be yours.”

“No, I am not happy with this situation,” Pitch says with amazing restraint. “Neptune is your daughter, and I have no desire to take her away from you.”

“ _Is_ she my daughter?” the man asks. “I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”

“She is yours,” Tatiana assures him quietly. “Pitch and I were no longer together at that point.”

“And you expect me to trust you!” Plinius scoffs as he looks at his wife with disdain.

“Run a paternity test if you must,” Pitch tells him. “She is not mine.”

The man takes the two of them in carefully, his eyes picking them apart and leaving the pieces scattered on the sitting room couches. He doesn’t trust either of them. No, it’s not that. He doesn’t _like_ either of them. He’s angry, but it’s a spiteful sort of anger. I can’t really ascertain more about his current state, and it’s the uncertainty of his motives that unnerves me. How he is so willing to turn on his wife even though he’s had affairs of his own only provides reason enough for concern. He’s a dangerous man, willing to fire in any direction based on his whims. And right now, the way he stares down his wife and Pitch makes it clear that anything can happen at this point, and we can’t assume that he’ll behave like a rational person.

“No,” the man says.

Pitch takes a deep breath. “Then I’d like you to get your child under control,” he says.

“The damage is already done,” Plinius tells him coldly. “Everybody now knows that she doesn’t want me.”

“She’s eight years old! There’s a lot going on, and she’s probably confused,” Pitch raises his voice despite his efforts to keep himself restrained. “You’re her parent. Tell everyone that she lied, or that she was dared by a friend, or whatever you need to do to keep her from continuing down this path.”

“So you want me to clean up your mistakes?” the man demands him, leaning forward in his chair to stare Pitch down.

Pitch stares right back. For a second, I think he’ll cave under the pressure and let Plinius walk over him. Plinius’ power remains a mystery to me, but I’ve learned that everybody in the Capitol has the potential to destroy us if they should choose. But instead he says, “No, I’d just like her to not make the situation worse. For all of our sakes.”

Plinius isn’t going to budge. He holds all of our fates in his hand, and he’s going to throw us aside because he’s too pissed off at his wife and Pitch and maybe even his own kids.

“My daughter has been clear in her wishes,” Plinius says. “Why should I stop her?”

He’s getting what he originally wanted, I realize with a start. But since his daughter is instigating the issue, this time he won’t be pegged as the unloving husband who sold out his family. And he’s just satisfied that he’s punishing his wife regardless. Neither he nor Tatiana care about their children’s wellbeing.

“Did you tell her to do this?” I ask, and everyone turns and looks at me as though they forgot I existed.

“Why the _hell_ would I tell my own daughter to betray me?” he asks, contempt glowing in his eyes. His fingers clutch the end of his armrests as though he barely restrains himself from throttling me.

To get back at his wife, of course. I keep this to myself because as much as I think I could take this man on in a physical fight, I know that we can’t let ourselves dissolve to that.

“So you won’t take a paternity test, you won’t stop your daughter from further spreading lies, and you’re okay that this is destroying your family,” Pitch says carefully.

“ _You_ are the one destroying my family,” Plinius says. Then he motions to his wife, “You and _her_.”

Damn this man. Him and his arrogance and stupid anger. His complete disregard for the children’s welfare. His blind rage at his wife and Pitch. I clench my fists, and this time Pitch is too distracted to realize that my own anger grows, and there’s nothing he does to try to stop it. It’s only through sheer willpower that I manage to remain in my seat, but I can’t stop the words that come out of me.

“Fine, we’ll take the girl with us,” I say to Plinius. “If she’s Pitch’s kid, then he has the right to spend time with her. Her and Pliny.”

I half expect Pitch to object, but he doesn’t.

Plinius turns his cold stare upon me. “No,” he says. “I will not allow that.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Pitch says. “Either she is my daughter or not. If you’re unwilling to take a paternity test and you’re unwilling to correct her public statement, then I can only assume that she is my child.”

The man doesn’t answer. He’s been backed into a corner, and he knows it. He wants to be angry and punish us, and he wants to keep his family together, but he can’t have both. He stands up, looming over us. His unspoken threats fill the room. But to my surprise, he turns and walks up the stairs without a final word. We watch him retreat in silence.

“He’s a proud man,” Tatiana says once her husband is no longer in our line of sight. “It hurt him to know that Pliny wasn’t his child, and it hurts him that Neptune claims that she isn’t.” As if that explains or even justifies his behavior.

“I’d like to do a paternity test on Neptune,” Pitch says to her. He has managed to pull himself back under control with ease. I, on the other hand, don’t dare speak because the anger still swirls through me and heaven only knows what I’ll say.

She nods. “Yes, that might be the only way to get him to see reason,” she says. “I will call her doctor to get it arranged and let you know.”

We’re quiet then. I would like to leave, but something unspoken remains in the air. I slip my hand into Pitch’s, and he squeezes it gently. Part of me fears that Neptune may really be his daughter and we’ll be stuck with the girl, too. But I swallow back those concerns because at this point it doesn’t matter. I glance around the room at this expensive house and all the nice things they have inside; none of it does any damned good if the people who own them are absolutely crazy. Only then do I see Tatiana watching us.

“Juniper, do you think you could excuse Pitch and me for a second?” she asks.

“No,” I answer.

“Please?”

I look at Pitch. He’s studying her carefully, but at long last he turns to me and says, “It’s fine. Just for a minute.”

Although I don’t know if Tatiana meant that I was supposed to leave or that they were going to excuse themselves elsewhere, I stand up and meander towards the doorway that leads to the adjacent room or hallway because I don’t want them to disappear into the house where I can’t find them if Pitch needs me. Not that Pitch can’t hold his own, but after the way both Faustina and this family treated him, I can’t help the uneasiness that crawls through me.

The adjacent room is an open kitchen. If you pass through this, you get to the dining room, and I don’t dare wander further to see what else is beyond that. The layout of this house doesn’t make sense (who goes from the front door to a sitting room to a kitchen, and are there bedrooms attached to the dining room or something?) and I can’t allow myself to be distracted. I keep out of sight but linger right near the door where I strain to hear the conversation.

“. . . If things had been different,” Tatiana says quietly. “I only wish we could have been together more than those three short months.”

Ugh. No wonder she didn’t want me around. I wonder if Pitch knew what he was getting into. I hear him say something, but despite my efforts, I don’t catch it. She follows suit and keeps her voice low, faint murmurings and unintelligible whispers floating into my hiding spot in the kitchen. I clench my fists and stare at the ceramic jars of flour and sugar and other things on the pristine counter. For a moment, I contemplate swapping out the sugar with the salt, but that would take me away from the doorway, and then I would hear nothing at all.

“Tatiana,” Pitch says, a little louder this time as he strains to keep his voice quiet.

“Just once more. Just before we go our separate ways,” she pleads.

Um, nope. That’s not happening. I step into the doorway just in time to see Tatiana, sitting uncomfortably close to Pitch on the couch, move her hand up his leg. Neither of them see me. Pitch tries to inch away from her, but she only leans into him and says, “My marriage is falling apart and yours is just beginning. It will be just this one time.”

I want to tear her apart. I want to rip her head off her shoulders and throw it to the other side of the room. At the very least, I want to punch the ever-living shit out of her. My anger pushes against my ribs, crying for me to just let myself go entirely and fling my body at this woman so that my fists can do their work without my mind interfering. And yet some vaguely rational part of me holds me back by a thread, and I manage to stand still. I grasp onto the casing of the doorway to keep myself steady and to fight the pulsing in my body that yearns to turn to violence.

“No,” Pitch says. “Your husband—”

“He won’t be around for long, and we can go somewhere else if he makes you uncomfortable,” she whispers, her head close to his. Her hand continues its voyage from his leg to his crotch, and Pitch grasps onto her arm as though it’ll keep her at bay.

My heart beats rapidly, and my breathing quickens. I can’t watch this anymore. I’m a coward for not punching her like she deserves to be punched, even if it means I’ll be punished later. I should take that punishment anyhow if it means keeping Pitch away from her. But still that rational part of me manages to keep me from acting.

“Can you please not rape my fiancé?” I ask from my position in the doorway.

They both turn and stare at me. Pitch with relief, Tatiana with surprise.

“I am not trying to—” but she can’t get the dreaded word out of her mouth. She pulls back her hand from his pants and sits there in shock. It’s the stupid look on her face that separates me from my anger enough that I can walk back into the sitting room. As soon as I do, Pitch breaks himself free from her control and stands up.

“We should get going,” he says to her. “Please let me know what office to go to for the paternity test.”

“Of course,” she says, gathering herself together enough to be presentable to her company. She, too, stands up, and she heads towards the door to open it for us. She can’t look either of us in the eye, which is just as well because I don’t want to look at her at all. Her hand grasps the doorknob and she’s about to turn it when her husband’s voice from the top of the stairs gets our attention.

“Don’t forget your daughter,” he says, and next to him is a crying Neptune, unicorn stuffed animal clutched in her arms and a rainbow bag slung over her shoulder. The man nudges the girl forward, and she clings onto the bannister as she walks slowly down the stairs.

So this is really happening. As much as I can’t stand this girl, a surge of pity goes through me as I watch her step down the stairs. Of course she loves the Hunger Games and watching kids bash each other’s brains out. She is a product of the Capitol. But she’s more than that—she’s a product of two people whose hatred for each other surpasses the love of their daughter. So when she finally steps onto solid ground and shuffles over to us, I reach out a hand to her. She takes it and moves in closer to me.

I glance up to see her father staring down at us with pure hatred. Behind him comes movement, and then the boy, Pliny, walks by, a bag on his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Plinius demands as his son reaches the top of the stairs.

The kid shrugs. “Going with my actual father, I guess. See you guys,” he says. He tromps down the stairs and joins us in the entryway.

At this point, it’s almost comical. But I have used up all my laughter and all my tears on other things, and I have nothing left to give right now. Pliny joins our little group at the door, but he pauses by the window adjacent to the doorway. He flicks open the shutters for a second and closes them just as quickly.

“This way,” he says to us with a nod towards the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” his mother asks. She stands with her arms crossed over her chest and concern heavy on her brow.

“The back way,” he says, and leaves the front door to go further into the house.

Pitch and I exchange a look, but the two of us, with Neptune in tow, follow Pliny towards the kitchen. From here he opens a back door that opens into bright afternoon sunshine.

Yes, my life is an adventure. And it might not be as grand as those in novels, but I can’t help the slight thrill of excitement that warms inside me. It’s something new and different, and something that’s not anger or fear or sadness or emptiness, and I clutch onto it as we go from the spotless kitchen into a quiet, but small yard. The back fence is hidden with bushes, and Pliny ducks into an opening in the foliage. We follow him, blindly trusting that this kid knows what he’s doing and he’s not leading us astray. But we keep next to the fence line for a few feet before we have to squeeze through a couple of broken boards. From there we hug the inside of the fence of somebody else’s yard, but the house appears to be abandoned with no light inside or shades on their windows and an overgrowth of vegetation where the lawn is supposed to be. We walk along the fence into the side yard, and then Pliny opens the gate and we end up in the front yard of this abandoned house.

“Sometimes I sneak out at night,” he explains to us casually, like this is just another one of his many nocturnal outings. But in leading us this way, we have successfully thwarted the crowd of onlookers in the front yard of his house.

Neptune remains at my side, her hand clutching mine. The tears have dried up, but her eyes still gleam in the afternoon light. Pliny isn’t through, though, and he has us cross the street, go through another yard, and another, and then we find ourselves in a park. He’s about to lead us towards the street when Pitch stops us.

“Are you sure you two want to do this?” he asks them solemnly. “Once the cameras find us—which they will do soon enough—there’s no undoing what has already happened.”

Neptune says nothing, but she watches him and sniffles. She doesn’t entirely have a choice here; her dad willingly turned her over because of whatever stupid reasons he has. She isn’t Pitch’s kid, but she’s also not Plinius’ either anymore.

“Yeah, it’s not like Mom and Dad are going to suddenly be reasonable about anything,” Pliny replies. “And anyway, I’m not letting Neptune go off with a stranger.” He then ducks his head and adds, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Pitch says. He studies the boy for a second. “Thank you for not leaving her.”

The kid’s cheeks redden and he turns away. “So if we go that way,” he says as he motions vaguely in front of us, “We’ll find Argon Street. Then if we walk a mile or so, it’ll take us to a bus stop.”

“We can call a cab, if that’s okay with you guys,” Pitch says. They both nod, and Pitch takes a moment to hail a taxi. When it finally comes, the four of us pile in even though it was only made to hold three in the back seat. The cameras will realize that we aren’t leaving the Corvinus household through the front door soon enough, and then they will be on us; we can’t be too picky in our getaway vehicle. As we sit there crammed inside and the streets fly by us, the suburbs give way to city. Neptune sits in between Pitch and me, quietly clinging to her stuffed animal. Pliny, on the other side of Pitch, watches the streets go by.

Pitch reaches over and touches my cheek. A reminder that things will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What the heck is even going on in this story anymore? How long is the final work going to be? Okay, I need to just accept that I can't expect to write a story of a specific length and thus must embrace the inevitable. Anyhow, I hope you're still enjoying reading it because I'm still enjoying writing it. So there's that at least.
> 
> tl;dr - Juniper and Pitch go to talk with Neptune's parents. Tatiana (the mom) keeps reminiscing about her time with Pitch. Then Plinius (the dad) appears and is angry and spiteful. He won't do a paternity test and he won't correct Neptune's public statement, so Juniper and Pitch say that they can only assume Neptune is Pitch's daughter and they'd like to take her with them. The dad declines and leaves the room. Tatiana asks Juniper to excuse her and Pitch and when she does, Tatiana tries to coerce Pitch to have sex with her "one more time." He clearly is saying no, but she clearly doesn't care. Juniper interrupts. They go to leave when Plinius returns with a distraught Neptune and tells Juniper and Pitch to take their daughter. But to the man's dismay, Pliny (the son) joins the victors and his little sister. Pliny leads them through a back route out of the house so that the paparazzi waiting out front don't find them.


	73. Chapter 73

We move the alcohol out of the fifth bedroom and lock it into the bathroom in the library so that Neptune and Pliny can have their own room. There’s only one bed in the room and nobody can expect a twelve-year-old kid to share a twin-sized bed with his little sister, so Pitch goes about ordering another one for them which hopefully will be delivered before it’s time to go to sleep. He then asks if they need anything else, and on further prompting, they confess that they didn’t bring much other than a change or two of clothes. So once more, Pitch sits down and orders more clothing so that they won’t have to wear the same couple sets for however long they’re here.

Caecilia watches this all silently. I can’t read her expression well enough to figure out if she’s just curious or if she’s jealous about the turn of events. Pitch was honest with her that he has other kids in the Capitol, but it’s another thing entirely to actually meet them, and still another thing yet to share her new father with them. But even worse, I know, is that Caecilia wasn’t a huge fan of Neptune, and here the little girl stands with her stuffed unicorn clasped in her arms. She’s quiet, but it’s only a matter of time before the shock wears off and she reverts back to the old Hunger Games enthusiast that she is. I take Caecilia into the library once it’s evident that Pitch can take care of getting the other two situated, but my efforts to distract her with books fails.

“I thought he said that Neptune wasn’t his kid,” she says over the top of her novel.

I put my book down because I know trying to explain this delicately won’t be easy. But as I look at this girl in front of me, I realize that I won’t be able to tell the truth and protect her at the same time. Maybe that’s Pitch’s style, but I can’t pull it off. Still, I’ll do my best to try to deal with this tactfully.

“Neptune isn’t,” I tell her. “But Pliny is. There was some . . . difficulty talking with their parents, and I think that she’s better off with us for the time being.”

Caecilia’s eyes begin to water. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I reply even though I’m pretty sure I know what she’s talking about. I’m trying to buy myself a couple extra seconds to pull my wits together. But how the hell I can tell this girl that I’m completely uncertain about her future is beyond me.

“When you go back to District 7?” she whispers.

Tears pool in her eyes and she sniffles and tries to keep herself from crying. But the tears slide down her cheeks and she takes several gulps of air.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I think it depends on what happens with your and Pliny and Neptune’s mothers and what they want to do.”

“Can he not do anything?” she asks. “If my mom . . . if she doesn’t want to take me back in, will he take me?”

“Caecilia, I’m sure your mom wants you back,” I tell her, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know that it might not be the truth. That woman is cruel and psychotic; she might very well leave her kid somewhere if it suited her. “But if something happens, we’ll get something sorted out—he won’t leave you without a place to go.”

She nods and then turns back to her book, but by the way she keeps blinking her eyes, I know she’s trying to hold back a fresh wave of tears, and she’s never going to be able to continue on with her reading.

“Will you help me get dinner started?” I ask her.

“Okay,” she sniffles. She sets down her book, stands up, and the two of us head out of the room.

When we get to the kitchen, however, we find Elm already working on something at the stove. He’s drunk, of course, but he has wisely moved his alcohol onto the counter behind him so that it’s not in danger of going up in flames.

When he turns around to grab it and sees us, he says, “I figured you wouldn’t be against me making dinner tonight.”

“Can we help?” I ask.

“Sure. Do you mind peeling those potatoes?” he says as he points towards a pile of potatoes stacked on the counter next to the sink.

Caecilia doesn’t need to be told again; she marches right over, grabs up the first potato and . . . stares at it. Oh, right, she has no idea how to do anything because she has avoxes to do all the work for her. So I dig up the peeler and show her how to wash and peel the potatoes. There’s only one peeler, but she takes it from me and slowly gets to work without further prompting. She has a good stack finished when Pitch emerges with the other two kids.

Elm grabs up a dish towel and tosses it towards Pliny. “Go wash the dirty dishes,” he says. And then to Neptune, he points her in the direction of the bowl and orders her to start gathering ingredients. He takes a break from his list of stuff for the girl to assemble in order to say to Pitch and me, “I have things handled in here.”

That, I assume, is him trying to give us a break from . . . whatever’s going on. Pitch nudges my arm, and I follow him into the bedroom wondering if we should be leaving the kids with a drunk guy. The sounds of the kids clattering around the kitchen with Elm disappear as I close the door.

“Pitch, what are we going to do with all these children?” I ask him.

His shoulders slump and he lowers himself down on the bed. “Absolutely no idea,” he admits.

I sit down next to him. “Caecilia asked what’s going to happen to them all, especially if her mom doesn’t want her,” I say.

He groans and leans back, propping himself up on his palms. “Faustina is complete shit, and I don’t say that lightly,” he says. “She was just as self-centered and manipulative back then as she is now. I wouldn’t put it past her to tell Caecilia that she won’t take her back, but I don’t think she’d be true to her word.”

“What about tomorrow? We’re supposed to go to the Presentation of the Victor, and they can’t come with us,” I say. Sometimes victors’ families go if they are Capitol citizens, but it’s pretty rare to see them with their spouses and kids at events such as that. Plus I’m pretty sure it requires advance notice so that there’s enough chairs for everybody, and there’s probably strict regulations about who can attend.

“I’ll contact Joule,” he says. “See if she has recommendations for babysitters.”

I guess that’s the benefit of having a fellow victor with connections.

“And about tomorrow, after the party,” Pitch starts.

“I don’t want to think about it,” I say. Fear eats away at my chest and I take a quick breath to try to push it away.

Pitch sighs and sits up straight so that he can look me in the eyes. He takes my hands in his and holds them. He looks like he’s going to say something, but hesitates. We sit in silence for a long minute, and I try to be comforted by his hands on mine. It does little to relieve the fear. Finally he releases one of my hands to tilt my chin up and look at me again. His eyes search mine for a second. At last he says, “If you want me to . . . tonight after dinner, we can come back in here. . . .”

“No,” I tell him, perhaps a little too firmly. I look down at our hands clasped together. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I know,” I say. “I’d rather not have sex with you just because I’m going to have sex with someone else tomorrow. I don’t see the purpose.”

“The purpose is. . . . Okay,” he says, changing his mind about trying to explain it to me. Just as well because I’m not sure I want to hear any more about it. “How about we do something different: We’ll go eat dinner and watch a movie and have dessert and not think about anything else besides whatever’s on the screen and on our plates.”

I smile. “Nothing else?” I say. “You can’t tell someone not to think about something.”

“Okay, then think about whatever you want,” he says. “I’m going to think about Elm’s cooking. Could you try not thinking about tomorrow?”

I could try, but I don’t think I’ll be successful. It’s a great darkness looming over me, and there’s no way I’ll be able to escape it. But I squeeze Pitch’s hand and say, “Sure.”

So that’s what we do. When we go back in the kitchen, we finish helping the kids with their tasks and Elm orders us all about, and then we carry the food into the sitting room because I have no proper dining room table, and we crowd into the furniture to eat. Pitch and I sit in the middle of the couch with Caecilia next to him and Neptune next to me. Elm and Pliny each have an armchair. We let the kids figure out what movie they want to watch, and they choose something about a princess in a castle (though Pliny mutters something about being outnumbered on that decision) and then we eat and watch the movie. Once our plates are clean and our stomachs have settled, we get dessert, and when that movie ends, we let Pliny pick whatever movie he’d like. He chooses one that takes place in the “Wild West” that crops up every now and again in fiction. We have to stop in the middle when the extra bed and the clothing is delivered, but once that gets set up, we turn back to our movie. True to my promise, I try not to think about anything except the movie and the food, and I’m pretty successful, though I fall asleep against Pitch before the movie ends. I’m vaguely aware of when he leaves to make sure the kids and Elm get to bed, and then he returns for me. He offers to carry me, but I tell him he’s an idiot if he thinks that’s going to work, and instead he guides me to our bedroom and the nice, comfortable bed where I curl against him and fall asleep.


	74. Chapter 74

Pitch is bound and determined to keep me occupied so that I don’t think about tonight, and I’m sure he wants to make sure the kids aren’t getting bored, either. So after we make a brief stop at Neptune’s doctor’s office (in which I sit in the waiting room with Pliny and Caecilia and Pitch takes Neptune back to the doctor), he asks the kids what they’d like to do today. He tells them that they get to choose because he’s not going to be able to take them to the Presentation of the Victor so this is an apology of sorts for leaving them with a babysitter. In the end they choose laser tag, and then they spend the entire cab ride to the place trying to explain to me what that means.

By the time we pull up to the facility, I’m pretty convinced that I never want to set foot inside, but Pitch puts his arm around me and we follow after the children like the idea of pretending to kill people with laser guns isn’t totally crazy.

The place is dark with neon and fluorescent paints glowing under black lighting. Pulsating music envelops us, and we practically have to shout to be heard. It’s not just a laser tag facility, however, because there are arcade games and various other forms of family-friendly entertainment around. Plus someone says there is bowling. Although I’ve heard of this, I’ve never played it myself, and the kids groan when I ask them if they’d rather bowl than play laser tag.

Pliny and Neptune have clearly been here before because they lead us right up to the desk to check in. Now that we’re inside, the enthusiasm Caecilia had fades, and she keeps tight to Pitch and me as her eyes flit about everywhere, taking in the bright colors against the black backdrops. I flinch when someone screams but I think it’s dark enough that no one saw. Pitch buys the kids passes so they can play laser tag, and when Caecilia asks if we’re playing, too, he tells her that he and I will be sitting out. The girl hesitates like she’s going to say that she doesn’t want to play, but he gives her the band to lock on her wrist to show that she’s a participant. Then Pliny and Neptune lead her over to the entrance of the laser room where the line up with several other people—kids and adults alike—and wait to be permitted entrance. I don’t think I understand what’s happening but after Pitch and I find ourselves seats, he tries to explain it to me.

“The laser tag area is enclosed, so we can’t see it from here,” he says. “They’re going to go put on some gear and they’ll get fake guns that shoot lasers. Then they’ll be put on teams, and they have to find and shoot whoever isn’t on their team.”

“And we’re just willingly letting kids do this?” I confirm.

Pitch laughs. “It’s no worse than half the stuff Capitol kids do,” he says. “And anyway, they have laser tag in District 7, too, but it’s not quite as common. I think I heard about one in Redwood but I’ve never been.”

“And this goes on for . . . how long?” I ask. The kids had explained that once they got shot by somebody else’s laser, it doesn’t mean that they’re “dead.” Instead they get stunned and have to wait for a certain period of time, and then they get to play again. But if no one “dies,” then this thing will last forever, or at least until everyone gets bored.

“Oh, they do it in sessions,” he says. “Probably fifteen or twenty minutes, I don’t know. I’ve bought them a pass so they can play as much as they want, and hopefully it’ll tire them out so they don’t give the babysitter much trouble.”

The line starts to move and the employee motions for everyone to file inside. On that note, Pitch stands up and leads me to a staircase not far away. When we reach the top, I realize that we can see the entire laser tag room they have. It looks like a maze with black partitions blocking off different sectors of the map so that they have to wind their way around. The fluorescent paints glow in colorful designs. Holographic images move about against the black backdrop. The entire thing looks extremely overwhelming, and I don’t understand how this could be fun.

“The pattern changes,” he tells me as we lean against a railing and look down into the laser tag room. A flat force field “ceiling” keeps us from interacting with the people inside. Right now, there’s nobody, and it all looks pretty still. “By moving around walls and changing floor patterns and adding different challenges and such, it keeps things entertaining for repeat customers.”

“They’ve made themselves their own arena,” I breathe. My heart thumps and I grasp the railing tightly as I try to steady myself. They love the Hunger Games so much, that they’ve decided to incorporate it into their lives as a fun way to keep themselves occupied. Suddenly all the bright lights and loud noises grow brighter and louder.

“Laser tag pre-dates the Hunger Games,” Pitch says. He glances at me, and then does a double-take. “Shit, Juniper, I didn’t think.”

I force myself to gulp down a few breaths.

“I’m an idiot,” he mutters, and he leads me away from the railing and towards a bench. We can’t see their “arena” from here. He sits us down. “I forget that coming to places like this doesn’t bother me. I guess I can see the similarities to the arena, but it’s different enough that I don’t really—ah, well, never mind. Take another deep breath.”

I do as he says, and when I have, he guides me through another breath. I lean back against the wall behind us and force myself to keep breathing. When I am more under control, he leans back next to me and looks out towards the arena railing.

“I had the same reaction the first time I came to one of these places,” he tells me. “Worse, actually. But it’s been so long that I completely forgot. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I manage. “At least the kids are having fun.”

We sit there for a few minutes in silence, listening to the music beat around us. Another couple people come up to the second floor and look over the balcony towards the people in the maze below. The game must be going on full-swing because these people try to find their friends or children or whoever and then cheer each time they locate one. Then they point at a scoreboard where they can keep track of who has how many points, but the names are all weird like “Killswitch” and “PopcornButterfly” and “TehDecimatorz” and such.

“How do they know who is who?” I ask Pitch.

“Oh, they get to choose their own names,” he says. “I’m going to take a wild guess which one is Neptune.” Sure enough, although it’s hard to figure out Pliny and Caecilia’s code names, there’s a “GODOFTHESEA” listed in fifth place for the “red team.” Not bad considering that there are about ten people on each of the three teams.

 _Fifth place still means death,_ I find myself thinking with a jolt, and I have to remind myself that this is not the Hunger Games, and that all of these players will walk away alive.

Finally I get brave enough to stand up and walk over to the railing. The other people have gone, and the maze beneath me is empty. I’m a little disappointed that the game is over and I missed it, but sure enough, the walls and floors begin to shift and move as the maze changes patterns. Pitch joins me and leans against the railing as we watch the walls lock in place.

“They utilize the technology of the arenas into this laser tag design,” Pitch says, his eyes focused on the shifting partitions. “I think one of the earlier arenas—from maybe around 100 or 110—featured a maze whose walls shifted.”

 _And his own_ , I think. _During the 125 th Hunger Games, the Capitol citizens got to turn off rivers and streams and alter the arena to their liking._ Is that so different from here?

I grunt. This is disgusting.

“It’s not unusual that technology from one arena is incorporated into other aspects of life,” he adds. “You remember when we went to the zoo? Most of those enclosures exist because it’s built off of arena technology. You’ll find many places around the Capitol utilize these sorts of features.”

“And you’re okay with this?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he says. “But overall, yes. I’d like to think that after all we’ve been through, something good comes out of it—something not related to the Hunger Games.”

He’s far more forgiving than I am.

The maze clicks in place, and then the scoreboard lights up with names and numbers, all of which are currently at “0.” Then the players are released from three separate spots in the maze—one for the red team, one for the blue team, and one for the yellow team. Each player wears a vest and a headband with lights that correspond to their team. Watching them move around is like watching car lights in the evening, but instead of nice streams of red and white light, this is a wild dance of color. As the players from each team clash into each other, the numbers on the scoreboard shoot up.

After the fourth game, Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune find us sitting on the bench where we’ve retreated when staring over the balcony became too much. They chatter about their games and scores and whose equipment wasn’t working and who must’ve been cheating, and their voices all clash and add to the cacophony of this building. They’re breathless from running around, and even in the dim light, I can see the excitement and exhaustion in their eyes. Caecilia flops down on the bench next to me, but Neptune dances around, still bursting full of energy.

“Please, play the next round with us!” Neptune begs when she twirls back over to us. “Please! It’s so much fun.”

“It’s really is fun,” Caecilia agrees. “I _almost_ got the highest score once!”

“Maybe another time,” Pitch says, and I’m grateful that he’s not giving in to the girls’ request because I don’t think I could get through a game without breaking down. Not that any of these kids would understand that when they’ve grown up loving the Hunger Games. The fact that the events in the arena make their heroes fall apart at the slightest upset would be beyond their comprehension. 

“If you tell us your code names, we can keep track of your scores,” I suggest to them.

They’re only too happy to let us know.

“I’m GODOFTHE SEA!” Neptune proudly bellows, her face becoming stern and her chest puffing up. I can’t help but laugh at her enthusiasm.

“I’m ElvenQueen,” Caecilia says.

“And I’m Taclininterish,” says Pliny. (Whatever the hell that means.)

Now that they know we can keep track of their scores, they bound away with renewed vigor to try to move their names up to the top of the scoreboard. As much as I hate the competition because I really can’t get over how much this is like the Hunger Games and the Capitol scoreboards for kills, I’m relieved that they’re no longer pressuring us to play with them. So Pitch and I settle in and watch another game or two as they battle for high score. The names jump up and down the scoreboard so quickly that keeping track of who has how many points proves challenging. Eventually I close my eyes and lean my head on Pitch’s shoulder.

We take a break from watching the scoreboard when Pitch suggests we go get something from the food court. The next time the kids emerge from the game, they find us eating chili cheese fries, so Pitch gives them money to get food of their own and they join us a few minutes later laughing and talking about the various laser tag rounds they’ve played. They proceed to explain it all to us, but it makes very little sense because I think that all three of them are talking about different games, or at least jumping back and forth between them. Even as they ramble about their games, Pitch watches them with fascination, doing his best to follow along even after I’ve given up keeping track of who did what when. He asks them questions and they shout out answers, and I think that no matter how much of a pain in the ass the last couple weeks was, Pitch is happy to meet his children and spend time with them. Even if Neptune isn’t biologically his, he treats her no different than the other two.

When they finish eating and the talk dies down, I ask them if they’d be willing to show me the arcade, which they are very eager to do. So the five of us head downstairs and I buy them tokens and they play all sorts of weird games, sometimes letting me have a turn to play (but only when I won’t mess up a high score or winning streak) and sometimes just telling me all about how the game works. Other times they talk about going to the arcades with their friends, or how so-and-so won a big prize, or whatever else. Pliny gets enough points to “buy” a bracelet for Caecilia and a ring for Neptune. The girls put their points together to “buy” Pliny a yo-yo. And then they ask if they can play more laser tag before we leave, so Pitch and I tell them that they’re more that they can play for another hour and then we have to head back to the apartment.

Pitch puts his arm around me as we stand at the railing on the second floor and watch the laser tag game unfold below. This time there is an added challenge of targets that any of the teams can hit which will increase their points.

“How are you holding up?” he asks me.

“Fine,” I tell him. “I forgot what it’s like to see people having fun about something that’s not at the expense of someone else.”

“Yeah, I think you will find that not everyone here is bloodthirsty,” he says. “They have hobbies and interest besides the Hunger Games. It’s just that none of that gets broadcasted to us in the districts. All we see is how much they want the district children to die.”

I think of all the times we went to the park and saw families and couples and individuals enjoying their time outside without caring about the cruelty of the world around them. They were having fun even as kids died in the arena. I had figured it was because they didn’t care that the tributes were fighting to the death and a walk in the park was just another part of their enjoyment of the Hunger Games. My entire perception of them has been very dismal: Hunger Games, death, entertainment, enslavement of avoxes, forced relationships, etc. So in a way, I just assumed that everything was tied together. But watching the kids play—and seeing all these other people around them have fun, too—makes me realize that not everything is tied into the Hunger Games and the thirst to see district kids die. Not that I entirely approve of laser tag, of all things, but not once has any of the kids mentioned the Hunger Games, or drawn comparisons between what they’re doing now and what happens on television. I hope it stays that way.

At last the kids reemerge and Pitch says it’s time for us to go. He keeps his arm around me as we walk, a casual gesture of affection. But as we step into the bright sunlight after being in the darkened building and I blink to protect my now-sensitive eyes, I know that it’s more than just a way to express his fondness of me. He’s supporting me, trying to keep me moving, and reminding me that he is here for me.


	75. Chapter 75

The kids are bummed that they can’t come to the Presentation of the Victor, but none of them complain about it, at least not in front of Pitch or me. We get them situated and comfortable, and then we go into our room to change.

I stare at the red dress lying on the bed. I have never liked the color red, but I have also never worn dresses that showed off quite this much skin, and that presents a far greater issue than the color. People will be staring at me tonight when they see me wearing this, and I don’t want that sort of attention. Whether it was Martha’s intention to make me uncomfortable or she just wanted to see me wearing this dress, I don’t know. I take a deep breath and when Pitch finishes his shower, I go to take a quick shower before I can get myself too worked up.

I dry off, put on my underclothes, and pull on the dress. It fits remarkably well, and I hate it. But my bra shows through, and I know that it was designed to not be worn with one, yet I’m determined to not leave myself so vulnerable that I have to abandon my underwear. I leave the bathroom and head directly to the dresser drawer where I begin to paw through my small collection of bras.

Pitch watches me from the foot of the bed where he’s adjusting a sock. But when he sees me frantically dig through my dresser, he comes over.

“Can I help?” he asks.

“Not unless you can make a better bra magically appear,” I grumble. But at last I know that it’s no use, and I return to the bathroom to finish getting dressed. As I pull off my bra and adjust the dress, I curse Martha and her stupid desire to see me wearing this thing. She must’ve known how uncomfortable it would make me, otherwise she would at least have sent over a proper undergarments. At least there’s padding.

But the dress is cut too low, and the back is nonexistent, and the bottom is far too short. I put on a mild amount of makeup. I could probably get away with more so I won’t look so washed out if the cameras find me, but I already feel like I look like a train wreck and don’t want to make things worse.

When I emerge from the bathroom, Pitch looks me over and says, “You look nice.”

“I feel like a hooker,” I tell him. Which I guess at this point I am. I cross my arms at my chest and glower at the floor.

“It’s not quite your style,” he agrees with some reluctance. “But it’s not _bad_.”

I stare at him.

“It might be chilly in the auditorium . . . you can probably wear a sweater,” he tells me.

Okay. I’ll go with that. So I pull out a sweater from my closet, and while I’m at it, I find thick tights to wear under the dress. None of it really goes together, but I guess Martha didn’t specify that I couldn’t wear anything else with the dress, only that the dress has to be on me.

Once I get my boots on and straighten out my dress, Pitch pulls me close to him. He doesn’t say anything; we just stand here together for awhile and I allow the warmth of his embrace to flow through me. Once again, I focus on him and the way he holds me and how his arms feel around me. I try to memorize it so that I don’t lose it when I need it the most. He kisses my cheek carefully to avoid smudging the powder I’ve dusted across my skin.

“Just do whatever she says,” he tells me.

I can’t respond to this, so I just bury myself deeper into his embrace. He tightens his hold on me.

At long last, the doorbell rings and I’m sure it must be the babysitter. Pitch kisses me briefly on the lips, then steps away to get the door, leaving me standing in the center of the room. I gather myself together, snatch up a book from the top of the dresser, and follow him out of the room.

Elm is already ready to go. Pitch talks with the babysitter, an elderly woman with a large handbag probably full of yarn for knitting. She has a kindly smile and a sweet voice, and she assures Pitch that she will take good care of his children. Then Pitch introduces the three of them to “Granny” (as she insists on being called) and tells the kids that they can stay up to watch the Presentation but have to obey when Granny sends them to bed. Pitch, Elm, and I head out of the apartment and down the stairs to a waiting cab.

My heart thumps and I can’t get comfortable. I shift my weight from foot to foot while I try to be polite and greet people—mostly fellow victors with a few stylists and escorts thrown in—as we wait to be told to take our seats for the Presentation of the Victor. Pitch keeps his arm around me to hold me steady. There are several victors I haven’t met, and Pitch introduces us, but I can’t really concentrate well enough to maintain eye contact, and I’m sure I appear either rude or dumb. I don’t care at this point.

At long last, Esther comes up to us, Maximus a half step behind her. Maximus and Pitch start talking about how crowded this place is and whether it’s over capacity. Esther, however, looks at me and says, “That’s a nice dress, Juniper. I never thought I’d see you wearing something like that.”

“Oh, thanks. It was a gift,” I manage.

“From Pitch?” she asks.

“Um, no. From somebody else,” I say vaguely. She looks at me for a second and I avert my eyes towards the stage. Lights illuminate the glittering curtains and the Capitol seal. Before I’m forced to turn back to Esther and pretend that I’m pretty okay, the lights in the auditorium start to flicker, and the hum of the thousands of people chattering turns into a feverish frenzy of excited voices.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Maximus says to Esther.

“You’re not sitting with us?” Pitch asks.

“Not this year. They’ll let us when we’re married. See you guys,” he says and he disappears into the crowd behind us.

It’s time for us to take our seats, and Esther, Pitch, and I follow the rest of the victors into the area meant for victors and Hunger Games staff. The lights flicker again, and they’re trying to get us moving and in place as soon as possible. The Capitol crowd behind us howls and cheers in anticipation. I sit down between Esther and Pitch just as the lights in the auditorium dim. The audience dissolves into “oohs” and the sound of people shushing each other.

The curtains draw back to reveal our host for the evening. But to my surprise, it’s not Caligula, as it has been every year. This time it’s Janice Lovely, the Hunger Games announcer. It’s weird seeing her in person, I realize—I’ve only seen her on the television. She’s a tall, middle-aged woman who wears more makeup in person that she does not television. Her large smile is emphasized by bright blue lipstick.

“Good evening, and welcome to the Presentation of the Victor for the 142nd Hunger Games!” she calls out, and the audience screams in excitement. The sound lasts for over a minute, a seemingly ceaseless cacophony. Once they calm down, she continues, “I think we can all say that this was an absolutely fantastic Hunger Games to watch. As much as a pleasure it was to be there with you through it all, I’m sure you don’t want to hear from me, so let’s get on with the program.”

Music blasts over the loudspeakers and the crowd cheers as Janice introduces the prep team, then the escort, then the stylist. And then Isolde is being raised up on the platform amidst cheers and screams and howls. The Hunger Games announcer lets Isolde get herself situated and waits for the crowds to get out some—but not all—of their noise before she says, “Let’s greet our newest victor. . . . Europa Vitner of District 1!”

The crowd screams even louder now and the top of the District 1 girl’s head appears at the stage. Slowly the platform raises her up, and we see her in all of her beauty: gorgeous blond hair, smooth white skin, vibrant hazel eyes, and a glimmering blue dress that accentuates her figure. She smiles at the audience. Nothing about this girl says that she just murdered eight kids. She’s confident. She’s beautiful. She’s a hero. She’s exactly what girls like Neptune are told to adore. She is the face of the Hunger Games.

Isolde greets her new victor, and the two of them beam at each other. This is Isolde’s first successful victor, I remember. And damn is she happy to be up there with Europa right now. Isolde leads the girl over towards the throne and makes sure she gets settled before moving off to the side with the others. Janice gushes about Europa for another minute, and then she invites everyone to watch the recap video.

Pitch puts an arm around me as the screens around the auditorium glow. From my other side, I hear Esther take a deep breath. I have Pitch with me, but she has no one. As she has done in years prior, she is on her own. I reach over and take her hand. She gives me the slightest appreciative smile. And then we’re forced to watch the damned recap video and pretend that not a single bit of this bothers us. I, like the other victors, force myself to watch even when I want to turn away. They show us everything that they feel is relevant, including the deaths of every single tribute. They paint Europa into a truly spectacular individual, and I suppose that in the context of the arena, she is. There are few who have the strength and power to pull off what she did, and to handle it with such grace and control is something truly remarkable.

At long last, the video comes to an end. Europa is given the crown by the president, and she waves to everyone as the anthem blares around us. At last the curtains close and the music fades. I should be happy that the Presentation is over for another year.

But now it’s time for the party at the Presidential Palace.


	76. Chapter 76

Pitch refuses to leave my side, even when people try to pull him away for various reasons. The president’s mansion is packed full of people with music coming from various rooms and laughter and talking and all sorts of noises I’d rather not hear. Pitch keeps his arm around me casually, and I lean into him and pretend that I can’t leave him because I’m madly in love and not because I’m so damned scared for my immediate future that I can barely function.

We make our way through the party, greeting people and making ourselves smile as though we appreciate the opportunity to mingle with the elite of Capitol society. Power and wealth are the keys to being invited into this party, and we can do nothing wrong for fear that we’ll upset one of them. My eyes dart about for Martha, willing her to stay away. But she keeps her distance, and I can’t find her here. Still, it’s hard to relax because this party is so big and she could be anywhere at all. We meet a gamemaker, an arena architect, and a woman who made a massive contribution to Europa’s fund and wants everybody to know that she supported the victorious tribute. I struggle to concentrate on the introductions and to look engaged in the conversations.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Pitch whispers to me at one point. “Relax a little. I won’t leave you.”

I’m probably coming across too stiff and uncomfortable. I try to do as Pitch tells me but it takes every ounce of concentration to relax my muscles enough that I don’t look completely held together by tension, but that’s exactly how I feel. Pitch tells me what muscles I need to relax, and it helps a little. Then we start walking again, and we swing by the food table where we find Esther and Maximus. I don’t know what Maximus’ background is, but it’s clear that he’s never been to a party like this and Esther giggles at him as he gawks at some of the intricate table decorations supporting platters of food.

Pitch gets us some food and says that we can share a plate, but I can’t convince myself that food is a good option. So he finds some non-alcoholic punch and I sip at the glass and try to convince my stomach that it needs to keep this too-sweet beverage from returning up my throat.

We come across Ferrer and Freya who make idle talk with Pitch. Freya sizes me up but doesn’t acknowledge my presence as they talk; I can’t afford to be offended. When they move on, Pitch and I continue mingling. A few more victors. A couple more rich people. Things start to blur together.

At long last, who should appear but Quintus? He smiles at us and asks me to join him. I reluctantly leave Pitch, and Quintus guides me outdoors like he did last year on this very night. But now he doesn’t appear quite as eager to place his hands and lips on me.

“That’s a beautiful dress, Juniper,” he says. “But I hope you take no offense if I say that it doesn’t suit you very well.”

“Thanks?” I mumble. My eyes dart around as I skim through the people on the patio. A great fire pit roars with an open flame. People mingle about with glasses of colorful beverages in their hands. A pianist plays off to the side of the patio. But I don’t see Martha.

Quintus clears his throat. “Don’t get me wrong—it looks good on you,” he says. “But you do not look comfortable in it at all. You ought to stick with dresses that make you more comfortable—confidence is sexy.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, but sit down in one of the wicker chairs scattered around. Quintus sits down in the one adjacent to mine.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’ll make sure to burn this dress when I’m done with it tonight,” I say to him.

“I can drink to that,” he says. I stare at him, not sure what he’s talking about. He smiles at me and continues, “I know that dress is not one of your own choosing. Red is her favorite color. I suppose it reminds her of blood.”

I shudder at that thought and think of the bunny guillotine she has in her yard. She designs arenas. She loves to see people suffer. She knows how to make people hurt. And whenever she wants to see a little extra bloodshed—whenever things get dull—she can easily go out to her backyard and fetch the biggest, plumpest bunny and chop its head off with a single stroke.

Last year, I never thought that Pitch was in the hands of a woman this cruel. He always came back to the apartment exhausted and emotionally depleted, but never once did he give any indication that he had to keep a psychopath entertained. What did he tell me: she lets people forget how much power she has? Maybe it won’t be too bad. Maybe she won’t torture me too much. . . .

“This was a nice chat. I think it’s time I get you back to Pitch,” he says to me.

There was no chat. I look at him in confusion. But he stands up and I do the same. He offers me his arm which I take carefully, and then we go back inside. Although Pitch likely hasn’t gotten very far, Quintus takes his time strolling through the party to talk with various people. He refers to himself as my friend and admirer, but there’s levity in his voice and he tells people that we lost track of Pitch and he needs to return me. When he finally finds Pitch, he kisses me on the cheek and wishes the both of us a good evening before disappearing back into the crowd.

“That was fast,” Pitch says as he puts his arm around me.

“He just wanted to say hi,” I tell him. His intentions still remain unclear to me, but I let it drop.

At long last the party starts to wind down and I know that we’ll have to leave soon. I still haven’t seen Martha, but it occurs to me that maybe she is waiting at her house. She probably left the party early just to make sure she was home in time so that she could see me walk up her driveway in this damned red dress. Pitch and I head out front and down the long walkway until we find a waiting cab. He gives the driver Martha’s address.

“I’ll go with you,” he whispers to me. “I can’t go in, but I’ll at least see you to the door.”

I curl up into him and put my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. But only visions of headless, bloodied rabbits pop into my mind, and my eyelids immediately flick open. Pitch strokes my hair and I stare out towards the bright lights and watch them all go by. I focus on his steady, calculated breaths.

The car pulls onto Martha’s street and I find myself needing to remind my chest to expand to allow air in my lungs. More bright lights greet us, but as we get closer to the house, we see that the lights belong to police cars. Several of them. A good half dozen police officers and even some peacekeepers stand around in Martha’s yard which has been taped off with yellow “crime scene” ribbon. I inhale sharply as our car slows down.

“What’s going on?” I dare to ask in little more than a whisper.

“I have no idea,” Pitch answers as he sits up straight.

The cab driver turns a bit in his seat to tell us, “Looks like you guys aren’t going here tonight. You want to be dropped off nearby?”

The police officers and peacekeepers tromp around on Martha’s lawn with little regard for how well-tended it was. They chat with each other, nobody in a great hurry. And then we see them unloading a stretcher from an ambulance. But it’s a stretcher with a black bag on it, and a sudden surge of hope goes through me.

Is there a chance that Martha died?

Or did she kill somebody else?

If Martha is dead, then I no longer have my obligation to keep her company. But if she’s alive, will she be completely pissed off if I don’t show up when I was supposed to?

My heart thumps and I grasp Pitch’s hand. “What do we do?”

“We can’t interfere with police investigation,” he says as he squeezes my fingers. Then he give the cab driver the address to my apartment. The cab pulls away from the curb, makes a U-turn, and heads back in the direction from which we came. Pitch frees his cell phone from his pocket. I watch as he searches his contacts and finds Martha, then dials her number. The phone rings. No one answers.

If she’s not dead, maybe she got arrested?

 _Don’t get your hopes up, Juniper,_ I tell myself sternly, but it’s too late. For the time being—even if it’s only temporary—I’m free from Martha.


	77. Chapter 77

We practically run from the cab to the apartment, and as I take the stairs two at a time, I’m thankful that I wore my boots for the event even if it clashes with the outfit. Pitch and I burst into the apartment breathless, and we find Granny and Pliny sitting up watching television. What happens inside the president’s mansion is off-limits to the press, but there’s plenty of speculation and lots of recapped footage from the Presentation of the Victor.

“The other two are sleeping,” Granny assures us. She must have seen the panicked state in which we came through the door and thought we were terrified that the children hadn’t been well-tended in our absence. I’m just itching to grab the television remote and check the latest news, but I hold myself back and try to be respectful.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Pitch says, regaining his composure. The old woman stands up and hobbles over to him, and they briefly discuss how the evening went and the woman’s pay. I sit down on the couch in Granny’s spot.

“How’d it go?” I ask Pliny.

He shrugs. “It went,” he says. He sits in one of the armchairs, legs dangling over the armrest. “I haven’t had a babysitter since I was about eight.”

“Thanks for humoring us,” I tell him.

“That’s fine. I didn’t want to be responsible for the other two anyhow,” he says. I don’t think he entirely means it. Not after he left his family in order to make sure that his little sister was in good hands. Still, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for Neptune. And then I realize that I actually kind of am, so that’s unfortunate.

“Can I watch the news?” I ask him.

He tosses the remote control to me and I catch it.

Pitch sees Granny out, and then he comes and sits next to me on the couch. We flip through station after station, but everyone is insistent on playing things related to tonight’s Hunger Games event. Finally we find one that is showing us Martha’s house, but from a distance.

“. . . At this point, no details have been released, but we have been told that there has been a potential homicide. . . .” the reporter says.

“Woah,” Pliny sits up in his seat. “What’s going on?”

“We don’t know,” Pitch says. “We were driving by and saw all the cars.”

Another couple minutes pass with no real information, a couple commercial breaks, a review of the Presentation, and then they’re back to Martha’s house. My heart continues to thump in my chest, never once slowing down despite the calmness of the apartment. I’m just as wired up as I was at the party, just as on edge, just as uncertain about the future.

“We are now being told that Martha Woolylamb, renowned Hunger Games arena designer, was found dead in her apartment this evening,” the reporter tells us.

Dead.

She’s dead. Holy shit, she’s dead.

It takes everything within me not to laugh right now. Or cry. Or scream. Or cheer. Or anything else. I exert extreme self-control as I lock my eyes onto the screen and drink in what the reporter says. I glance at Pitch who remains silent as the reporter repeats that they will give us more information as they find out. Pitch’s face is blank. It’s like the news wiped everything out of him entirely.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he says at last. He stands up and leaves the room without waiting for Pliny or me to acknowledge what he said. The two of us are engrossed in the television anyhow. We gobble up every bit of news about what’s happening, even though there’s precious little to tell us. My heart thumps and the anger and fear and terror I’ve felt over the past few days lifts away from me, if only a little. And that’s enough for me right now.

_Martha is dead._

I don’t care about much else.

I stand up and tell Pliny that it’s time for bed. He stares at the screen for another moment before he tears himself away. I flick off the television. Once it’s clear that he’s moving towards the bedroom, I bid him goodnight and go to my own room.

_Martha is dead._

I don’t know how many times I will say it and try to reinforce that it’s the truth and not something I’m whispering in the darkness to comfort myself.

I close the door quietly behind me only to realize that I don’t hear the sound of the shower running. Pitch’s shoes have been abandoned by the door, and I nudge them aside so that I don’t trip over them. Pitch himself lay on the bed, turned away from me. Well shit. What the hell is wrong now? Martha is dead and we are finally free from her. I kick off my boots before crawling into bed to lie next to him.

When he realizes I’m here, he rolls over and sniffles.

Wait, he’s _crying_ over this bitch?

“I can’t tell you how often I wished this would happen,” he says. But despite that, he doesn’t look happy or relieved or anything. He runs his thumb over my cheek, no longer concerned with smudging my makeup.

“Why does this make you sad?” I ask him carefully, afraid that maybe he _did_ like her in some way.

He shakes his head. “Not sad, just . . . um, confused, I guess,” he says. “For years I was with her, and I contemplated how I could possibly kill her without getting anyone else hurt. I knew it was wrong, that just because I was a victor didn’t mean that I needed to turn to violence to solve my problems. And yet, some days it was the only thing that would get me through. . . . It was nothing more than a fantasy. But then when she dismissed me and took you in my place. . . . This timing. . . .”

Yes, perfect timing.

Quintus has something to do with it. I know for a fact. How could he not?

“I don’t think we should talk about it anymore,” I whisper. “At least not about how it happened. Nobody even knows anyhow.”

“Of course,” he says. His eyes scan my face for a moment, and then he draws me nearer and kisses me. I wrap my arms around him and he pulls me closer to him so that there’s no space between us, and our hearts beat and our chests heave and I don’t ever want to stop kissing him, not even to breathe. But we have to catch our breath every now and again. His hand runs the length of my dress from my ribs to my thigh, but as soon as the fabric ends he freezes and moves his hand to my waist. I barely notice because I’m too absorbed in his lips on mine.

Something has gone right in our lives. I don’t know what it means, nor do I understand the extent of the damage this has done, but for the time being, we are safe. We are safe, and I am Pitch’s and not Martha’s, and I don’t have to worry about wearing this damned red dress for anyone. I don’t know if it was fate or deus ex machina or some carefully laid plan, but one of the obstacles that tried to tear us apart has been eliminated. I find myself laughing, and Pitch hesitates, but I just kiss him again until I’m laughing too hard and have to catch my breath.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

I nod. The laughter has drifted away, but a smile lingers behind. He smiles back at me and we’re stupidly grinning at each other, but who the hell cares?

In the morning, we go about our business as usual, but we try to sneak into the sitting room to turn on the television without the kids looking. They’ve had their stomachs filled with pancakes and eggs, and we send them off to go change into clothes for the day. Elm emerges clearly hungover and Pitch gives him a plate which he takes back to his room. The door closes firmly behind him.

I flick on the television, and the two of us sit there for a couple minutes as we’re caught up on the details: last night around the time the Presentation was ending, the police responded to an emergency call placed by an avox in the household. When they answered the call, they found that Martha had been decapitated by her own guillotine. One of the avoxes has been charged with homicide and was taken into custody.

“What about the bunnies?” comes a voice behind us. Pitch and I whip around to find Caecilia standing there. She has dressed and put on a touch of glittery makeup, not nearly as heavy as it was before, but still enough to see that it’s there. Her brows are furrowed in concern, and she turns from the screen to us as she waits for us to assure her that everything is okay.

“I’m sure they’re being taken care of,” Pitch reassures her.

She comes and sits down on the couch next to him.

“I really hope so,” she says. “They deserve better than her.”

 _Don’t we all?_ I think.

We watch the news for another couple minutes until it’s clear that they’re not giving us any more information, and then there’s no point in just watching the same thing over and over. Pitch turns the television off and just in time because Neptune comes out of her room a moment later.

Under normal circumstances, Pitch and I would be returning to District 7 today. That was our plan until the wedding was moved to the Capitol. Now, however, today is a day that’s free from the Hunger Games and we have no obligations to do anything for the wedding because, I’m sure, everyone who is related to that aspect of our lives is probably still asleep after an exhaustive night of partying. We could do something festive today to celebrate the end of the Hunger Games—though perhaps it would mean something different to us victor than to the kids—but instead I spend my time in Pitch’s arms where we lay on the couch while the three kids take turns choosing movies for us to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome.


	78. Chapter 78

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some rude conversations. Very brief tl;dr at the end.

In the evening, we watch the interview with the new victor upon the kids’ insistence, and it’s not like we can protest too much. Europa is beautiful, charming, and the perfect representative of the Hunger Games. She loves the cameras, and they love her. Janice Lovely interviews her flawlessly, and I wonder if she’s going to replace Caligula forever or just for the immediate future. The questions she asks are, in the context of a post-Games interview, appropriate. Nothing about this sort of interview is non-intrusive, but Janice approaches each subject tactfully and gives Europa questions that will accentuate her strengths without drawing attention to her weaknesses, whatever they may be.

Once the interview ends, we start trying to figure out what we want for dinner, and the kids all have their own conflicting ideas which doesn’t help things. But a few minutes into the discussion, we hear a sharp knock on the door. Pitch stands up and answers it.

Faustina.

Of course. The Hunger Games have ended and she no longer needs a babysitter, so she is back to claim her child. She stands in the doorway regally as though she owns this place. Her nails are newly done, her makeup is perfect (by Capitol standards), and she wears what I can only assume to be the latest fashion since I have not seen anything quite like it yet.

The moment she sees Caecilia, she sweeps over to her with long coat sleeves billowing around her like wings. She inadvertently slaps me with the excess fabric as she brushes by without any regard to my presence. When she reaches Caecilia, she cradles the girl’s face in her hands and says, “Oh, my dear! Did you miss me? I have missed you so much!”

Pitch stares at her with his jaw clenched, and he watches Faustina kiss their daughter on both cheeks. Caecilia looks up at her mom with a mixture of relief and apprehension—a strange combination for a child being reunited with her mother.

Neptune and Pliny look on, and I know that things are going to go downhill fast. Before I can react, Faustina turns on Pitch, using her body to block Caecilia from him.

“Did you even _think_ about updating me about how my daughter was, or did you try to keep her from me intentionally?” she demands.

“ _Our_ daughter,” Pitch says firmly.

Even if I hadn’t already had experience with Faustina, it’s clear that things aren’t going to go well. I glance over at Pliny and manage to make eye contact. “Can you please take Neptune and Caecilia to your room?” I ask quietly. He nods, and I nudge Caecilia to get her attention. She looks up at Pliny and his sister as they stand, and I nod towards them. The girl gets the hint and gives her parents one last long look before she follows the other two back towards the bedroom.

“Oh, now you’re calling her ‘yours’,” Faustina says. “After eleven years, you finally decide to grace her with your presence.”

Pitch doesn’t have a reply to this. Perhaps it’s a little too close to the truth. As he said, he could have done more to be part of Caecilia’s life, but he chose not to. Even though the truth is far more twisted than that, this is the truth regardless. His silence appears to be just what Faustina needs to fuel her rage.

“You don’t give a shit about that girl!” Faustina yells at him. She steps closer to Pitch and continues, “You left me to raise that child by myself, and then you just march in and try to take over her life!”

Er, well, I don’t recall it quite working out like that. I keep my place on the couch where I can watch these two. Pitch remains closer to the door having moved only a foot or two since he let Faustina in the apartment. Faustina isn’t too far from me, but she seems to not realize I’m here at all. She’s too absorbed in Pitch to care about me.

“Faustina, you know that’s not what happened,” Pitch says.

“That’s not what happened?!” she screams. “You fucked me and got me pregnant and then _abandoned_ me! Did you even _once_ try to contact Caecilia or me? No! Did you pay child support? Send her birthday gifts? Were you there when she broke her arm? Absolutely not. You’re a pathetic excuse of a human being, and I don’t know why I even bothered to spend time with you when you were clearly a self-centered pig who only wanted one thing out of me. And then when I got pregnant, you couldn’t have what you wanted so you left.”

“Okay, Faustina, what do you want from me?” Pitch asks. He keeps his voice steady, but I know him well enough that it’s clear that he struggles with this woman. He might come across as calm and collected, but he’s on the verge of falling apart.

“I want you to leave Caecilia alone,” she says. “You’re an unfit father, and you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near that child, or any child.”

I frown at her. She’s the one who left Caecilia with us! What the hell?! If he was so unfit, maybe she should have done her research on him before she just abandoned her kid over here.

“You’re making accusations without proof,” he replies to her. “I might not have a lot of parenting experience, but you have no grounds to accuse me of being ‘unfit.’”

“You think you’re being so clever, but it’s so clear that you have no idea what you’re doing,” she says to him, her voice smooth and silky, like she’s trying to lure him into a false sense of security before tearing him to pieces. “When I walked in here, I saw the fear in Caecilia’s eyes—she wants nothing to do with you and she wants to return to her mother who knows how to take care of her.”

“I would like to spend time with our daughter,” Pitch says.

“You didn’t want Caecilia!” she cries out, fury on her face. “When I got pregnant, you wanted nothing to do with either of us!”

“No, that’s not what—”

But she cuts him off: “You wished that she was dead! You wished that both of us were dead so you wouldn’t have to deal with us anymore!”

“No, I didn’t say that at all. I—”

“How do you feel now knowing that that beautiful girl might not have had a chance to—”

Without realizing what I’m doing, I kick out the back of Faustina’s knee. She falls forward and just barely misses the coffee table before hitting the ground with a thump. She cries out and starts screaming at me, but I just move next to her and crouch down. She rolls over on her back to face me. Her lips are sneering in anger, and she spits out curses. I press my hand against her chest, my palm digging into her sternum.

“Listen to me,” I say. She starts swearing that she’s going to call the cops and I press harder against her until she’s quiet for a split second. “You can say what you want about Pitch or me or anyone else and get away with it. But you will _not_ say another thing about your daughter. You will _not_ blame Pitch for anything that happened in the past, or is happening now, in any way that will upset Caecilia!”

“I _will_ call the police! No, I’ll call the peacekeepers!” she snarls at me. “They know what to do with little whores like you. Cut out your tongue and make you an avox.”

I stare down at her. The anger in her boils up and twists her features. The once beautiful, put-together woman is now a sneering, sizzling mess of a person.

“And what are you going to tell them? That your daughter enjoyed her time with the father you’ve kept her from for eleven years?” I ask. My own anger keeps me balanced, and I manage to speak evenly in the face of her rage. “Or maybe that you abandoned her here without anything more than the clothes on her back so you could go party without her getting in your hair?”

“Or that he forced me to give Caecilia to him. Just like he forced me to into his—”

I cut her off with a sharp slap before she can accuse him of forcing himself on her. My hand itches to deal her a proper blow, but I learned my lesson last year—my anger can’t get the best of me to the point where I mark up a Capitolite, no matter how despicable they are. Pitch must fear that I have forgotten this because he comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder, guiding me away from Faustina. I stand up and take step back from her.

“That’s enough,” he says to her. “You will not use Caecilia as a tool to get what you want. I think it would be more . . . _practical_ if we took this up with our lawyers.”

Faustina sits up and huffs at him. “You want me to get a lawyer. After your slut of a fiancé slapped me like that?!” she demands.

“Do not talk about Juniper like that,” he orders. But despite the sternness of his words, he keep his voice stead. “Get out of here. Get your lawyer to contact mine, and then we’ll talk about Caecilia.”

Faustina grabs onto the coffee table and shoves herself to her feet.

“I am absolutely _not_ leaving Caecilia with you two lunatics!” she shouts. She cups her hands around her mouth and calls, “Caecilia!”

Pitch folds his arms across his chest. “She is staying with me,” he says. “You come in here and threaten Juniper and me. You talk about sensitive subjects with the children in earshot. You are not going to take Caecilia with you, not until you’re more reasonable. Leave.”

Faustina backs up towards the door. “Nobody is going to want you to be her father,” she says to him. “They’re going to look at you and realize what a terrible person you truly are, and then they will return Caecilia to me. Even your lawyer will see what a waste of oxygen he’s dealing with, so don’t think that just because you have some professional with you that he’ll be able to help you. And if you try anything at all, I will let them know that you took advantage of me.”

“I’ll break your kneecaps if you don’t leave right now,” I tell her.

Pitch’s hand tightens on my shoulder. Violence and threats aren’t the answer right now, sure, but neither is what she’s saying. She’s completely delusional, and she won’t leave my apartment.

Faustina straightens up and stares me down, but I hold her eye contact without flinching, and she finally turns away. “You will never get custody of my daughter,” she says to Pitch as she walks to the door. Now having the final word, she steps out of the apartment. Pitch closes and locks the door behind her, leaving us with an uneasy silence. As much as we don’t want her here, the threats linger in the air in her wake.

I turn around to see Caecilia and Pliny in the hallway with Neptune peaking her head out of their bedroom door.

“Shit,” I mutter, and Pitch looks up at my word. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second. He rubs his forehead and leans back against the door.

“Caecilia,” he says when he opens his eyes again. “Come out here. Pliny, take Neptune into your room.”

I start to move towards the library, but Pitch says, “No, please stay here, Juniper.”

I hesitate, but do as he asks and sit down on the couch. He comes and sits down next to me. Caecilia shuffles into the room, eyes on the floor, and sits down on Pitch’s other side.

Pitch looks at her. She lifts her eyes and looks back at him with sadness. Her bottom lip trembles.

“What of that did you hear?” he asks her.

She looks away. “All of it.”

He sighs and doesn’t respond right away. The girl should have heard none of that. Although Faustina instigated it and propelled it forward, we probably should have made sure that the kids were in the bedroom with the door securely closed so that they had no opportunity to overhear more than they absolutely needed to.

And I’m a little scared of what Pitch will say now. After his previous conversation with her in which he took the blame for everything and accepted Faustina’s wildly untrue labels for him just so that he didn’t have to hurt his daughter, I’m concerned that he’ll do the same thing now. He might be trying to protect her, but how would reinforcing what Faustina said keep the girl from unhappiness and discomfort?

“Does she ever talk to you like that?” he asks her.

Caecilia hesitates. She glances at Pitch for a second before looking away. “Sometimes,” she whispers. But then she quickly adds, “But only when I’ve done something wrong. She’s not bad.”

Yes, she’s bad. She’s terrible. She claims that Pitch is a waste of space, but it’s entirely her who takes up more oxygen than she ought to be allowed. I grit my teeth to avoid saying anything.

“Does she raise her voice like that at you often?” He studies her carefully. The girl doesn’t respond, even when her mouth opens like she’s about to say something. Her jaw quivers, and Pitch adds, “I’m not going to be angry at you. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Mmhmm,” she says, but I don’t know if she’s acknowledging what he said, or if it’s an actual answer to his question.

“Does she ever hit you?” he asks her.

She shakes her head quickly.

 _But of course she doesn’t,_ I think. _Why hit her when she can just scream at her and tell her how ugly she is?_

“Does she . . . has she left you with people before when she has gone to do other things? Besides babysitters?” he asks.

She thinks about it for a moment. “Normally Grandma when she was alive. But sometimes I stay with her friends,” she says.

“How long does she normally leave you?” he asks.

She shrugs. “A couple days, sometimes. Maybe longer. It depends,” she says. But then she quickly assures him, “I’m really good at following my homework so I don’t fall behind.”

“What do you mean, Caecilia?” he asks. “Don’t you go to school?”

“Mom—I mean, yes. But sometimes Mom says that I’m too good for school and she has me do the work from home,” she answers. She scrunches up her face as though she’s in pain, and then I realize that she _is_ in pain. I don’t know why, but talking about this makes her so terribly uncomfortable that it’s expressed physically.

 _Is that so weird?_ I ask myself. _How many times have you expressed your emotions in physical means? Maybe not with pained facial expressions but with your fists?_ I stare down at the fading scar on my hand from the bloodbath party where I smashed apart the mirror because I was so upset and couldn’t contain it inside me anymore.

“Caecilia, I think we should have a very . . . grownup conversation now,” Pitch starts slowly. “It’s not something I think is appropriate for an eleven year old, but neither was the conversation you just overheard.”

He draws in a deep breath as he gathers his words together. Trying to tell her what she needs to hear challenges him, and he takes a minute to assemble his thoughts.

“Sometimes your mother gets angry and says things that aren’t entirely true,” he continues. “But sometimes . . . sometimes there is some truth in them. She is right that I never reached out to contact her over the years. Or you. That part is true. But I never _didn’t_ want you, either. I, um . . . I have problems. I didn’t think I’d be a good father to you, so I stayed away. I didn’t realize that she, um, that she yelled at you, or left you behind to do other things.”

“Mom said—” Caecilia starts. But then she immediately clamps her lips shut.

Pitch watches her for a second before he says, “It’s okay. You don’t need to say it if you don’t want to.”

But Caecilia takes a breath and continues, “Mom says that when I was born, you wanted to leave me on the side of the road where vultures would eat me. She said that you tried to get the doctors to give me to you so you could kill me.”

Pitch’s mouth opens. “Oh, Caecilia,” he says quietly. “I never did anything like that. I didn’t even . . . I didn’t visit the hospital after you were born at all. And even if I had, I _never_ would have wanted you dead.”

He takes a deep breath. Tears roll down his cheeks. “Caecilia, I am so, so sorry that I left you without ever checking in you,” he says. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a father to you. And I’m sorry that your mother told you things that were untrue. I should have been there for you. . . .”

The girl clasps her hands in her lap and sniffles. “She lied to me?” she whispers. “Why would she do that?”

“Caecilia, your mother is a difficult person sometimes,” he answers. “I don’t know why she lied to you, but it wasn’t appropriate. And I should have been there for you, but I wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

The girl puts her head in her hands and sobs. Pitch wipes away the tears on his cheeks but it’s only a matter of time until he can’t hold himself together either. I reach over to the table behind me and grab a couple of unused napkins from a previous meal and pass it over to them. They take them from me but it does little to help stem the flow of tears.

“I’m getting a lawyer to help us sort out the situation. I want what’s best for you, Caecilia, and the lawyer is going to help us make sure that happens, okay?” he says as he searches her face.

“Will I be staying with you?” she whispers, her voice heavy.

“I don’t know what will be decided,” he says. “Do you have a preference?”

She sniffles. She clutches her napkin in her hand. Her eyes glisten with tears, but her face hardens as she thinks about his question. She doesn’t answer right away, and he doesn’t push her.

“I miss Mom,” she admits. Her words are thick with sadness. “But I like being here.”

If the lawyers or whoever decide that Caecilia stays with us, does that mean we don’t return to District 7 or that she comes back home with us? I suppose it doesn’t matter. I watch as Caecilia dabs her eyes with the napkin and then blow her nose into it. Her mother really fed her lie after lie for so long, and she had no way to find out that it wasn’t the truth at all. How many other things in her life has she been lied about? And knowing this, why the hell does Caecilia miss her?

“Caecilia, I would like to make the phone call to the lawyer now,” he says to her. She nods, but he doesn’t move right away. It seems like they’re both waiting for something unspoken, neither of them saying anything and yet having so many words to say. At last Caecilia throws her arms around him, and he wraps his arms around her, and the two of them hug for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr - Faustina returns. She insults Pitch. Says mean things. Pitch and Juniper kick her out and will get a lawyer. Pitch talks with Caecilia. Caecilia reveals that her mom said that Pitch wanted her dead. Pitch says that's not true and that her mom lies a lot. Then they hug.


	79. Chapter 79

Pitch is in the bedroom on the phone and the kids are reading and watching television. I slip out to the porch for a breath of fresh air. My brain is scrambled with information. Once I heard the news that Martha had been murdered, everything seemed different. The world around me was brighter, clearer . . . I only had to deal with the wedding and then I’d really be free. But when Faustina reappeared, I was forced to realize that things aren’t as easy as they seem. The constant back-and-forth reminds me of Pliny’s yo-yo the girls bought him with their points at the arcade; up-down-up-down-up-down. No real purpose. No real goal. Just this constant swinging back and forth.

Elm finds me after awhile and steps onto the porch. It’s a tiny feature of the apartment, probably part of some legal requirement or another. The only furniture I have out here are two stools and a small table with a fake plant—all of which Isolde ordered a year ago and I’ve barely used. I now sit cross-legged on the cold concrete and stare between the bars towards the city streets below. Elm joins me and lowers himself onto the ground. He reeks of alcohol but he’s changed into normal clothing, not his pajamas or yesterday’s leftovers.

“I got an invite to your wedding,” he says after a minute. He, too, stares off towards the city where people bustle back and forth on their morning errands.

“Congrats,” I tell him. “Good to know they tried to invite people we like.”

“You guys really are clueless about your own wedding, aren’t you?” he comments.

“Yeah, I guess,” I admit with a shrug. “We aren’t the most enthusiastic bride and groom. And anyway, we have so much going on that it’s been a little hard to focus on the details of a wedding celebration we didn’t really want—please don’t tell anyone I said that,” I add quickly.

He nods. “Your secret is safe with me,” he says. “Though . . . it’s funny to think of you and Pitch together. After all these years, Pitch finally found somebody. You guys are crazy for doing this, by the way.”

“If I wasn’t crazy before, then this is probably going to drive me there,” I reply. Elm laughs, but it’s not funny. Or maybe it is, I don’t know anymore. But this is almost too much for me, and I’m not sure how much of this I can take. Still, I hang on because I can’t give up right now, not after we’ve gotten so far.

“I wanted to thank you,” Elm says after a pause. “For helping me with Wisteria. And apologize for being an ass about it.”

It seems so long ago that Wisteria was a part of our world. And I must be growing callous against life in the Capitol if I can so easily write her off as part of the past and no longer a concern of the future. But, I realize, that’s not entirely true. The moment Elm mentioned her name, memories of the girl pressed into my mind and weighed down on my chest, if only for the briefest of seconds before the heaviness is whisked away like the ghost she has become.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” I reply.

“Not your problem,” he says with a shake of his head. “That’s mine to deal with.”

“Do you have to deal with it alone?” I ask.

He snorts. “Juniper, we’re victors. Everything we do is alone. We emerged from the arena because we were alone, and we’ll deal with our hell alone,” he tells me. “I know you have Pitch but neither of you will ever truly understand what the other went through.”

Does that matter? We are both victors and we know that the other experienced his own unique version of hell, but that doesn’t mean that we’re really alone.

But Elm might not understand this, and I don’t mean to imply that he lacks the capability to understand; rather, he really _has_ been alone. I have never once seen him with friends—even non-victors—and his family rarely comes to visit him. In the two years I’ve known him, he hasn’t had a single person come over to his mansion that I’ve seen, nor has he ever mentioned that he was hanging out with anyone else. He exists by himself in a world of nightmares of the Hunger Games inside his victor mansion.

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He stares off through the bars of the railing into the distance. Even in this moment, he appears to be alone, lost in his own thoughts as he surveys the Capitol.

“I know it never really gets better, but I keep hoping for relief,” I find myself saying. “But it’s like as soon as I’m happy about something, another thing happens that ruins it. It’s exhausting.”

“That’s because you’re thinking that you can only find happiness in happy situations,” he tells me.

I turn away from the city sights and frown at him. “What?”

“You can’t just suffer through the shitty parts of life hoping that things get better,” he says. “Because life is a constant downhill slide from one thing to another.”

“That’s . . . really optimistic,” I say. I can see now why Elm drinks if that’s his approach to life.

But he shakes his head. “You’re not understanding. If you’re upset about something and you say that you just have to get through it and then you’ll be happy, and then another bad event happens, you’re constantly stringing yourself along and you’ll never have a break.”

“So you’re saying that despite the bad shit that happens, I should find happiness in everything?” I confirm.

“Perhaps not _in_ everything, but _despite_ everything,” he answers.

What a very odd reaction from somebody who decides that life is miserable enough that he needs to drink to cover up the pain.

“Is that the philosophy you subscribe to?” I ask.

He laughs. “I suppose,” he answers. “The alcohol helps.”

We’re quiet then. The alcohol doesn’t help. Maybe it did at first, but now it’s nothing more than an addiction that he needs to feed, and there’s nothing about it that brings him any sort of comfort or happiness. It dulls the pain, but then only leads to further complications. More pain. More dead tributes that you failed to save because you were too drunk to send sponsorships when it was needed the most.

And what of me? How the hell am I supposed to find happiness when the world around me is constantly crumbling one piece at a time? I tap my fingers against the bars in front of me and listen to the _clink_ of my nail reverberate through the metal.

“Staying in the Capitol until your wedding means that I can postpone rehab for another few days,” he says quietly to me. “When I received the invitation, that was the first thing that went through my mind. Not the fact that I was happy for you guys or anything else like that. Juniper . . . I hate being an alcoholic, but I know that were I in the same position, even knowing what I know now, I would do it all over again.”

The rationality of this eludes me. I understand that he’s addicted and can’t just set the bottle down, but if he knows it’s bad, then why would he want to choose it all over again?

“Is it that bad, being a victor?” I ask him carefully.

“Do you even need to ask me?” he replies. But he takes a breath and continues after a moment, “I killed a twelve year old. Just some little kid who was hoping that he’d have a chance at victory. He was no threat to me. He didn’t even stand a chance. But I just killed him all the same. He was going to die from somebody’s hand, so I figured I might as well get it over with.”

I know this. We’re told all about the victors of District 7, and we’re forced to watch recaps of their Hunger Games. It’s funny because on one hand you’re watching this completely disgusted that these kids are in this position at all, but on the other hand, you’re disgusted at the kids themselves for the things they do in order to survive. And then the ones who live come home as heroes, but they can’t forget the shit they did because they know there was nothing heroic about betraying their allies or killing little kids without provocation.

“Actually, I might be able to postpone rehab until you guys get back from your honeymoon,” Elm says more to himself than to me.

“Dr. Castillo is nice,” I tell him, though it sounds flat compared to his confession. “She’ll help you.”

“And then what am I left with if not alcohol?” he asks, his attention back out on the city streets. Cars speed by, people walk their dogs, the world continues on in this post-Hunger Games stupor. “It might be killing me, but so is being a victor. The alcohol just slows down the process. . . . Listen, I didn’t come here to dump my problems on you. . . . I have my moments of clarity, and this is one of them, so I wanted to let you know that I’m going to do my damnedest to stay sober enough to help you with the kids.”

“Thanks. It’s appreciated,” I say. I think of when he made lunch the other day, and how much of a relief it was to not have that responsibility. A small gesture, but a welcomed one. “But I’m sure you know that we can’t leave them with you.”

“I know. Especially not with whatever issues Pitch is having with Faustina,” he says. “Which is another thing I want to mention. Watch your back, Juniper. That woman will do anything and everything to get her way, even if it’s at the expense of you or Pitch or Caecilia or the other kids.”

I’m beginning to understand that very well.

“I keep thinking that she _must_ love Caecilia,” I tell him. “And then she goes around and says these things to her. Like Caecilia told me that her mom told her that everyone thinks she’s ugly. Who the hell says that to their kid?”

Elm laughs humorlessly. “Pitch is beautiful. His daughter is beautiful,” he says. “Hell, even her mother is. Sounds like she’s extremely unstable. Make sure that Pitch tells this to his lawyer. Anytime Caecilia repeats something her mother says, it needs to go on record. Otherwise she’s going to end up back with her again.”

“What’s the alternative? That she comes back to District 7? That we stay in the Capitol?” I ask him. Frustration creeps into my voice.

“Juniper, what Faustina’s doing to her is considered abuse,” Elm says quietly. “She might not be hitting her, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not still damaging her. And if she’s filling Caecilia’s head with these things over and over again, she’s going to kill that girl just as much as if she had slapped her around one too many times.”

Abuse?

Sure, why not?

The Capitol is full of it. They treat the tributes and victors alike with the same sort of attitude: we’re just things to be tossed around. They don’t care if they insult us or offend us or anything of the like as long as it makes them feel better about their own situation. How is that different than what Faustina is doing, except instead of a stranger, it’s her own child? If anything, that makes it worse. That’s her own kid that she’s supposed to be protecting, and instead she insults her and tears her down.

Elm sighs and rubs his arm as he stares off into the distance. “How ironic is it that we spend so much time trying to save tributes whose families desperately want to see them back, and then here’s this woman who easily casts away her kid.”

“But I don’t think she’d want the girl to go to the Hunger Games,” I point out.

“No, probably not,” he says. “But who knows?”

I’m sure there are plenty of people in the Capitol who love their children and would do anything for them. But that only makes me wonder how they can so easily give up other people’s kids for their entertainment if they love their own. Surely they realize that Capitol kids and district kids are all still kids, right? Somehow it’s easier to think that the Capitol is full of people like Faustina because what loving parent would be okay with sending kids to the Hunger Games?

“The more I try to make sense of everything, the more confused I get,” I sigh.

“Think of it this way,” Elm says. “Most parents see their kids as priority number one. But for whatever reason, Faustina doesn’t. She is the biggest priority. Remember this when you’re dealing with her because she’s not going to suddenly decide that Caecilia’s needs are greater than hers, even if she pretends that that’s the case.”

I laugh dryly. “You’ve been listening in to all the conversations, haven’t you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It’s hard not to hear her when she’s screaming her head off,” he says. “And, anyway, I’ve known a few people in my life.”

“It’s just so strange that Caecilia still wants to be with her mom, even after she’s found out that her mom’s been lying to her her entire life,” I say.

“She’s still her mom,” Elm says. “And Caecilia is still a little kid.”

I nod. Yes, that’s true. I try to place myself in Caecilia’s position and pretend that I found out that my mom has been lying to me my entire life, but as soon as I toy with this idea, I immediately reject it. Despite my attempts, I really can’t wrap my head around why anyone, kid or otherwise, would want to return to somebody who is that damned mean.

“Juniper, whatever happens, don’t give up on your studies,” Elm says. I frown at the random turn in conversation and look over at him. He meets my eye and continues, “You need something in your life other than Pitch and Pitch’s problems.”

“I’m not sure how to interpret that sentence,” I say with confusion. Nor why he even bothered to bring this subject up. We were talking about Caecilia’s problems, not mine.

“What are your hobbies?” he asks, and I know he’s setting me up for something.

“I read,” I tell him. Lame, but true.

“And?”

I hesitate. That’s . . . pretty much it. I read, I hang out with Pitch, I try to avoid televisions. “I play the piano?” I say. But that’s something my parents got me into after I won the Hunger Games, and I never quite found great entertainment in plunking at the keys, no matter how nice my parents said I played.

“Right. And I drink,” he says with a huff. “Okay, I’m going to try _not_ to sound like I’ve been stalking you—because I haven’t—but I am your neighbor and see you come and go often enough. I’m pretty sure you don’t have any sort of hobbies that don’t involve your family or Pitch. You don’t even have a real victor talent.”

“That’s not my fault,” I say quickly. “They denied my first request and made me choose something that they literally won’t let me do.”

“The thing is that after you win, you forget about your hobbies and friends and the things you liked before,” Elm says. “You’re too wrapped up in nightmares and the shit you’ve done and trying to survive, so you do what you have to do in order to get through the day with no real thought about how it affects your future. Don’t look at me like that . . . I know what I’m doing to myself, even if I don’t like it. And I also know that you’re doing the same thing, too. You can’t deny it because you already told me that you’re barely scraping by each day.”

“Stay in school and don’t do drugs,” I mumble to myself. I rest my forehead against the cool metal bars.

“Right,” he says. “And don’t rely on Pitch. He’ll do everything he can to try to protect you and keep you safe, but you need to do things for yourself that don’t involve him.”

As much as I don’t want to admit it, he might be right. I spend my entire time in school wishing I weren’t there and that I could be back home with my parents and Pitch. I don’t concentrate fully on my work, I try to avoid doing anything extra, and I don’t like being engaged with my peers. They’re too different from me, and they would never understand what I’ve gone through. But the idea of branching out and actually _doing things_ separate from my little world in District 7’s victor village makes me uneasy.

“Pitch will kill himself trying to protect us all,” he mutters as he looks down at a woman sweeping the porch of a small shop across the street. “So don’t do what I did. Make something of yourself, and show him that he doesn’t need to protect you.”

I’m not sure that he _doesn’t_ need to protect me. But I understand that I can’t be another burden on Pitch. I want to say something to Elm to assure him that he’s not a burden himself, but I can’t get the words together to make it sound moderately convincing. Elm is right that Pitch tries to protect us, and though he might never admit that Elm adds unnecessary weight, that doesn’t mean that he’s not a burden.

“Not to be too random here, but you don’t happen to have a key to the library bathroom?” Elm asks.

I shoot him a look, but we’re interrupted when the door opens and Pitch steps outside. I crane my neck to look up at him. He throws a glance towards the kids in the sitting room, then closes the door and joins us on the patio floor.

“The lawyer said that he’ll take care of things from here and get back to me,” he says. He should be relieved that the situation is in someone else’s hands right now, but he’s not.

Nobody really has a reply to this, and the three of us sit in silence for a few minutes. Elm’s advice bounces around my head. All of it seems so contradictory to his own lifestyle that I have to question why he bothered to tell me anyhow. Yet even that confuses me because it’s not like he was _wrong_ about it all. A couple more minutes pass, and decide I leave them to their own devices and head back inside. The kids look up curiously at me, but I just sit down in one of the armchairs and try to keep myself occupied with their television program.


	80. Chapter 80

Now that the 142nd Hunger Games are a thing of the past, it’s time to focus on the wedding. Daphne comes over to explain that they want to do some sort of promotional video or another in which I come and look like I’m choosing decorations for the event and arranging them at the venue. I think it sounds like a nightmare until Pitch appears from yet another phone call and says that he needs to meet with his lawyer and the Corvinuses and their lawyer. Then I decide that my fate today is much better than his.

“Juniper,” he says when I retreat into the bedroom to change into something presentable for cameras.

“What?” I ask. I root through the closet to find a shirt and pants that are decent in the hopes that whoever’s organizing this won’t make me have a wardrobe change when I get there. He doesn’t respond right away, so I turn around to face him.

His expression is tense. “Um, the results of the paternity test came back,” he says. “It, um, says that I’m Neptune’s father.”

“Wait, but I thought you—”

“I know, I had my vasectomy by then, and even if it failed—which it didn’t—I wasn’t with Tatiana at that time,” he answers. “I don’t know if the test is wrong but I suspect . . . I don’t know exactly, but this might have been an intentional ‘mistake.’”

That doesn’t make sense at all. Plinius, no matter how angry he was, wouldn’t just pay someone off to fudge a test so that he has no children at all. Unless, I suppose, it really bothered his wife. But then he wouldn’t have his kid, and didn’t Tatiana say that Neptune was a daddy’s girl? So why would he push away someone who clearly loved him? That means that there was an outside influence of some sort. For some reason.

“Okay, well. I guess we have another kid then,” I say after a moment.

His lips twitch with a smile, but it doesn’t quite make it. “Thanks,” he says. “I just don’t want Neptune to get hurt. . . . I don’t want it to turn into a battle of _doesn’t_ want this girl.”

“Sure, we’ll take her,” I say. “Especially if it pisses off Plinius.”

“Ah, Juniper, you can’t just let your desire for revenge drive you,” Pitch says. I frown and he says, “Go get ready so you can do your photoshoot. I’ll see you later.”

As I change in the bathroom, I contemplate Pitch’s words and decide that he’s wrong. I do not have a desire for revenge; I only want things to be _right_. Whatever Plinius does doesn’t fall into that category, so I just want to fix it. And if Plinius gets pissed off in the meantime, then so be it.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I tell Daphne as I come out of the bedroom. But then I find that she’s not alone—Caecilia and Neptune are with her, eagerly waiting for me to be ready. Well shit. I don’t want to have kids in this, especially if the lawyers end up ruling that Pitch is an unfit father. How would that look if they’re in this supposed propaganda film but then not allowed to go to the actual wedding?

Then again, maybe this’ll help. We want them and we’re incorporating them into the wedding. _This is so messed up. We’re using these kids more than enjoying their presence._

“Where’s your brother?” I ask Neptune. She’s all ready to go in a dress and miniature purse. Caecilia stands beside her wearing slightly more sophisticated clothing and a purse just big enough for a book.

“He’s not coming,” Neptune responds. “He said that this was for girls only.”

Fine. No way I’m leaving him here by himself, not with me going one place and Pitch going another. I turn around and head back down the hallway where I stop in front of Pliny’s bedroom door. I pause to gather my thoughts and then rap my knuckles against the solid wood.

“Hey, Pliny?” I ask.

“What?” comes his voice from inside the bedroom.

“Do you mind coming with us?” I say to him.

He opens the door and looks at me. “You really want me to come pick out decorations?” he asks with heavy skepticism.

“I’d like to have somebody who sees the value in not having glitter everywhere,” I tell him.

He affords me a smile but then quickly rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “One second.”

I leave him to his own devices and return to the others. The girls bounce from foot to foot and ask Daphne all sorts of questions about where we’re going and what we’re doing and whether x or y will be there. She patiently answers them all, but I can tell by the grittiness in her voice that that patience is wearing thin. Fortunately we don’t have to wait much longer for Pliny, who saunters out and joins us by the front door. Now that we are all present and accounted for, Daphne leads us down to a limo.

A freaking limo. Why the ever-living crap did they decide a limo would be great for this event? The kids’ eyes light up when they realize that we get to ride in it, and when Daphne opens the door and motions for them to get inside, they’re more than happy to scramble into the vehicle and make themselves comfortable. Despite living a life of luxury, none of them appear to have had the opportunity to ride in a limousine, and they laugh as they explore the comfortable leather seats, the glittering fake jewels encrusted in the door and ceiling, and the little spigots that dispense beverages—Daphne is quick to flick a few switches and change the settings so that the kids can only access the non-alcoholic beverages.

“Don’t make a mess,” I find myself telling them as they mix together all the sodas they can into each of their glasses. They giggle and slurp the sodas and then lean in to add more. The limo starts moving, and the kids crawl around the open space, looking things over and checking for any more surprises.

“The first stop is to make you presentable,” Daphne says, looking down at her tablet. I refrain from making any comments on that because I know better by now. She continues, “I think it would be a good idea to have the kids involved, if you’re okay with that.”

I trust Daphne’s advice on this. She knows enough of what’s going on behind the scenes to make this decision. So I nod and say, “I think they would like that.”

“Good,” she says. “After we get that out of the way, you will visit several shops during the day, and the camera crews will videotape you throughout so they can put together a program that shows us getting everything together for the wedding. Flowers, bakery, decorations. We’ll go to the venue as well so you can make sure everything is to your liking. Also, do you have a ring for Pitch?”

“Um, no,” I say. “Am I supposed to? I don’t know how these things work.”

“Yes, you should,” she says. “I know he has one for you. It would be nice if we get something that matches, so I’ll talk with him later about it. Ah, we will also stop at a little café partway through the day to have lunch.”

“Also videotaped?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. She consults her tablet and scrolls through a few things before saying, “The good news is that this is all something we can do today so unless there are any major issues, we shouldn’t have to worry about this in the future.”

Thank heavens. I don’t want to worry about this at all. But I keep it to myself because I am grateful that Daphne is here helping me. How this would have unfolded without her help. . . . I don’t bother trying to think about it.

“I assume I just have to smile for the cameras,” I say.

“Pretty much, unless you wanted anything else,” she replies.

“Nope, I’m good,” I answer. But for as calmly as I speak, my insides are screaming. An entire day in front of the cameras, pretending that I’m thrilled about something I could not be more indifferent about—how the hell am I going to pull this off? And while babysitting children at the same time? I take a deep breath and force myself to calm down. I’ll get through this. _No, I have to find some way to enjoy myself despite this._

We reach the first location which is a small boutique that thankfully is not open to the public right now because we’re ushered inside for a “makeover.” The girls’ eyes glisten with excitement but Pliny just looks at me and says, “You owe me.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” I say as they whisk me away to put me in some outfit because the one I chose isn’t good enough for them. Now I wear a white sundress with rose print and pink lace at the hems. Fortunately they require little work on my hair besides spraying it with some rose-scented chemicals and pinning it back with a large golden clip. They put a gold bracelet on my wrist and a dainty gold necklace on my neck. They do my makeup with matching gold accents, and then tell me that I look _so beautiful_ and everyone will love me. Then I’m reunited with the children who are wearing their own nice little outfits that complement mine but don’t really match it, and Daphne is then herding us back into the limo.

“You _really_ owe me,” Pliny whispers. But he actually looks pretty snappy in a pair of khaki pants and a baby blue button-down short-sleeve shirt. They combed his hair, but now he takes a second to mess it up a little bit.

The girls wear dresses not dissimilar to mine, but a little more juvenile. They smooth down the ends of the dresses and Daphne instructs them to leave the drink dispenser alone for the time being so they don’t spill anything on themselves. But the girls can barely sit still, and they keep giggling.

As we drive, Daphne explains to me what our next destination is for.

“The first stop is the flower shop. When we get there, they will want a shot of you and the kids entering the shop,” she explains to me, tablet in hand. The children listen in, the excitement suppressed as they listen to her information. “The arrangements have already been chosen so just go in and admire the flowers. But I should note that if there’s anything here that you want, please let me know because there’s enough time to switch it out. That goes for any of the shops.”

“Alright,” I say.

Then she turns to the kids. “Have any of you guys been on television before?” she asks them.

They shake their heads, so the escort goes over things that they need to do and not do. Mainly they have to be polite, act natural, ignore the cameras unless directed otherwise, not make any rude comments even if they think something is ugly, etc. The kids nod eagerly.

The limousine pulls up to another curb where there are several shops in a row. The flower shop sits with an antique store on one side and a jeweler on the other. It’s a quaint little area with flowering plants growing in planters under the shops’ windowsills. And, of course, there are cameras. Daphne gets on the phone and makes sure that it’s time for us to leave the limo. When she gets the okay, she tucks her phone away, gives us a forced smile, and opens the door. She climbs out first, then holds it open for the rest of us.

It’s hard to ignore the cameras. Despite already having several interviews under my belt and surviving so many cameras in my face shortly after I emerged from the arena, this is entirely different. There are several to capture us from different angles, and though they all keep their distance, they can’t be fully ignored, either. I’m acutely aware that they’re picking up every little movement I make, every gesture, every mistake. As I climb out of the car, I make sure that my dress is in order and that my facial features don’t betray my dislike of the situation. Caecilia takes one of my hands and Pliny takes Neptune’s hand, and we head into the flower shop.

More cameras inside capture us as we step through the door. I keep my expression neutral, but the girls begin gushing over the various flowers they see. Even Pliny is drawn away from me and admires some of the flowers. The sudden surge of enthusiasm from the three of them makes me laugh, and I release Caecilia’s hand so she can check out some of the other flowers.

“Welcome, my dear!” says a woman as she bustles over. “My name is Pink Petunia, and I am so happy to have you here in the shop!”

“Thank you for having us,” I tell her. The kids look over, and I motion for them to return to me where I then introduce them to the lady. She smiles at them and tells us that we’re all welcome and to please enjoy the flowers. Then she gives us a tour and shows us the various bouquets and asks me what I had in mind. I tell her that I’m open and I’d like her opinion, which seems to be exactly what she wanted to hear. She shows me a bouquet with beautiful blue and yellow and purple flowers whose names I don’t know, and it’s surrounded by greenery, including sprigs of pine. After a bit of back-and-forth discussion, she decides that she’s going to make some minor changes to this, but otherwise this will be my bouquet.

“We can incorporate these flowers and plants into your wedding decorations,” she explains to me. She pulls out the matching clump of flowers she calls a “bootineer” that Pitch will be wearing. Then she tells me about other ways that the flowers will be included in the wedding, and I just nod and listen and pretend like I am somewhat interested in what’s going on. Then they want us to walk around the store and admire flowers like we’re actually looking for something of our own. Finally we’re told that that’s good enough, and we have to stage a nice little “thank you / we’re leaving” scene of sorts before we can leave the flower shop and get back in the limo. The girls are given small flowers to take with them, and they gush over how great they are.

Daphne says that the next place we’ll go is a bakery. “You’ll get to choose your own cake here,” she says. “They will only show you the ones that are appropriate for a 100-person wedding, so please don’t worry about the logistics. Just choose whichever one you like.”

So true enough, when we get to the bakery and get all situated inside, the shop owner goes through the different cakes with me. He shows me some that are already made just as a model, but then he brings up a tablet that projects holographic images of cakes and has me choose the one that I like best. Caecilia has her eyes on some multi-tier one with flowers and whatever, so I say that that’s the one I want. The baker nods and assures me that he’ll make sure that he has District 7 in mind when he creates it, and I thank him and we’re off to the next place.

Daphne says that this next stop is the first of several decoration places. I am so weary already that all I can do is nod and accept my fate. We’re only two shops into this and I’m already fading. But I pull myself together and pretend that this is not terrible if only for the sake of the kids who are still pretty gung-ho about this. Even Pliny is more engaged with what’s going on since the baker’s assistant gave the three of them cake samples at the last stop.

This first decorations place isn’t too bad. They just want me to wander around and pretend to look at various tablecloths and place settings, but everything’s already been chosen. The cameras capture a couple of clips of Daphne and me “discussing” what I want, and then we’re free. The second decoration place is a little more intense and requires me to actually look more enthusiastic about what’s going on. So I let the kids pick out the some stuff they think will be nice for table decorations and call it good, even when Pliny decides that I really need to have a topless mermaid as part of the décor. (“Really?” Daphne asks me with a raised eyebrow as she turns the small figurine over in her hands. “Just at the table he’s at,” I tell her. “Use whatever the girls chose everywhere else.”)

After that, we take a break for lunch at a sunny café where the five of us sit outside. The cameras hover around us as we take a couple minutes to go over what we’ve found so far. To my relief, they encourage the kids to give their “honest” (in other words, positive) feedback about the various shops and what we “decided,” so that takes the camera off me a little. Then once the food is delivered, they leave us in peace to finish out our meal.

“How are you holding up?” Daphne asks me. She takes a sip of her tea.

I stare down at the plate with sandwich halves I’ve barely touched. I’m not holding up that great. This is all too much. Not only do I have to keep up this façade of actually enjoying what I’m doing, but I have to do it for an extended period of time while being videotaped. The only things I have going for me is the fact that Daphne has already picked out a lot of this stuff in advance and the kids pull attention away from me. Between Daphne and me, we manage to ensure that they can’t be portrayed in a negative manner by only saying positive things to them and nothing that can be taken out of context. But it’s all so much.

“I’m doing fine,” I lie. I give her a smile to show that I’m not lying. But, of course, Daphne sees right through me. She just says “hmm” and nods, but her eyes tell me that she knows otherwise. I’m happy she doesn’t pry. It doesn’t matter how badly I feel because I know that the Hunger Games may be over and Martha may be dead, but I still need to keep up appearances. After all, I have to show them that just because I volunteered for a random girl doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to follow their orders.

After lunch, we go to another shop to look at decorations, a dress shop to fit the girls into pretty dresses for the wedding (I tell them that Pliny is not required to try on clothes and the measurements they used for today’s outfit will do just fine), and then we go to a restaurant to try samples of food for the dinner which might be the kids’ favorite place because they get to try so many things. Finally we go to the venue and Daphne walks me through what she has envisioned for the place, and they instruct me to give input as well so that they can capture our interactions like I really care what happens to this damned hall. Fortunately the microphones are unlikely to pick up what I’m saying because they just want to capture some longer shots right now. At the end, it’s pretty clear that I’m tired and I struggle to hold myself together. Even the kids are dragging a bit.

“Preparing for a wedding is hard work,” one lady tells me sympathetically. Daphne had introduced us, but for the life of me, I have no idea what her name is because it slid out of my brain about two seconds after she told me. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the coordinators for the venue. “My friend is a masseuse and I _highly_ recommend you contact him. . . . You need some relaxation before the stress gets to you.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I say politely so that I don’t have to commit to another event I absolutely don’t want.

But Daphne says to her, “Why don’t you give me her contact information?”

I distract myself with counting how many people fit at each of the round tables so that I don’t turn around and glare at Daphne for feeding into these people’s delusions that I would really love to have other people’s hands on me. That will absolutely not relax me.

“Well, that was a pretty big day,” Daphne says as we get back into the limo. “I hope you guys aren’t too exhausted.”

The kids look back at her with happy, but very tired, smiles. Even Pliny seems to have enjoyed the outing.

“You held up well, Juniper,” Daphne tells me as the kids discover that there’s a snack dispenser in the vehicle and try to see what sort of foods they can get out of it.

“It was a bit trying,” I tell her. “But thank you for handling everything.”

“Ah, well, all part of the duties of a wedding planner,” she replies. I think there’s humor there, but I can’t really tell and I’m too tired to sift through her words.

I close my eyes and lean my head back against the window. Almost back to the apartment. The limousine carries us through the city streets, and at long last it comes to a stop in front of the apartment complex. I thank Daphne again and after a brief prompting, the kids do the same. I know at least Caecilia knows her manners, but even she is drooping with the exhaustion from the day. The four of us troop up the lawn not bothering with the path, and then cut across to the entrance. Normally I take the stairs, but today I can’t do more than press the button for the elevator.

I unlock the door and wave the kids inside. They head in and start talking with a sudden surge of renewed vigor about everything we did today the moment they see Pitch. But when I stumble inside and slump against the door, I realize that something is wrong. Although Pitch humors the kids and listens to them all spouting off stuff about the day, his expression is strained and his eyes keep flitting around like he’s trying desperately to keep himself focused.

 _I can’t wait to find out what new hell is upon us,_ I think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Special thanks to Unicorn7 for providing me with a list of things that need to be done for weddings.
> 
> 2\. I think it's time for another Choose Your Own Adventure. Don't people have parties before they get married? Bridal showers and bachelorette parties? What better way to torture my character? But I also want to do this without torturing the author, too, so I don't mind any sort of suggestions, particularly about what you'd like to see for a bachelorette party.


	81. Chapter 81

“Plinius and Tatiana want their children back,” Pitch tells me as soon as we excuse ourselves to the bedroom. The kids are cleaning up after their long day, and Elm is in the kitchen making dinner.

“I’m not surprised,” I say. “So what’s the problem?”

He sits down on the chair by the dresser and sighs. “Those people are crazy and I don’t want the kids going back with them,” he says. “This probably sounds stupid because I’m not great father material and you never wanted kids, but it still somehow seems better that they stay with us than they go back to that house.”

I lean back against the wall but end up slumping down on the floor because my legs are too tired to support me anymore. These three kids are nice, but Pitch is right that I never wanted children. I don’t have the maternal instinct, I’ve never had any desire to be pregnant, and I am kind of afraid I’d accidentally let a kid get eaten by wolves or something because I forgot they existed. I’ll admit that having children that can feed themselves and don’t require me to change diapers is a plus, but even then, there’s so much responsibility surrounding it that I don’t know how much I can handle. What we’ve been doing the past few days is more of babysitting than actual parenting. What happens when they need to be reprimanded, or they have some big crisis with their friends? I am so not equipped for this.

“Pitch . . . I really like them, don’t get me wrong, but . . . Caecilia and Pliny are only a few years younger than me,” I say. I draw my knees to my chest, careful to tuck my dress up, and wrap my arms around my legs. Resting my head back against the wall, I look up at him. “It’s only a matter of time until they realize this and start questioning my authority, and what the hell am I going to do then?”

He rubs his forehead and exhales. “I know,” he says. “It doesn’t help that they’re so infatuated me with and everything going; I don’t want them to think that this is what life is always like around us.”

I watch Pitch carefully. He’s exhausted. He hasn’t gotten a break the last couple weeks. It’s just been one thing after another after another. I think about what Elm said about needing to find something for myself to do besides deal with Pitch and his problems, but right now, this isn’t just about Pitch. I’m in this as much as he is, and I’m not going to think otherwise.

“I know that you said that raising kids is really different than taking care of tributes, but whenever I look at Caecilia, all I can think is that in another year, she could be dead like Rosa,” I admit with hesitation. “As much as I try to tell myself that she will never be reaped and will never go to the Hunger Games. . . . I can’t help that it just pops into my head at random.”

He doesn’t have an answer for this. Instead he closes his eyes and disappears into thought. How, I wonder, does any victor have children out of their own free will knowing that they could be reaped? If I’m this worried about a kid that isn’t mine who has no chance of getting pulled into the Hunger Games, then how the hell do victors deal with it when it’s their kid whose name is in the reaping ball?

“You’ll never forget them,” he say at last. It takes me a second to realize that he’s talking about tributes, not victors’ children. He watches me as he continues, “Each year, you get another kid to mentor. You’ll learn their names, their faces, their hobbies, their fears. And then they die, and they will follow you around wherever you go. You’ll see them everywhere in life, even when you least expect it.”

For us here in District 7, we get to have a break every now and again. I always figured that it meant a break from mentoring, but now I see that it means a break from acquiring the ghosts that will haunt us forever. Each year we don’t mentor, we get one fewer face that appears in our waking nightmares. But, of course, each year we do mentor, we add one more child to the library of the dead.

“Is that why Liberty and Bris refuse to mentor?” I ask. They’ve been around for years, and until District 7 really picked up with the victories, they probably were responsible for most of the kids. I pluck at the fabric of the dress I’m wearing, suddenly aware that I never changed after the limo ride and someone out there still has my other set of clothes.

Pitch huffs. “Liberty says she’s done her time,” he tells me. “I can hardly push an old woman to take this up again. Bris. . . .” Pitch’s voice fades for a second.

Bristlecone was Pitch’s mentor many years ago. He’s a somber man who keeps mostly to himself, but he’ll socialize with us should the need arise. He keeps us at his arm’s length as though he’s afraid to get too close, or maybe that he’s too “old” compared to us “younger ones.” He’s in his mid-fifties, and Vesa, the next oldest, is about fifteen years his junior. But since Vesa, Pitch, and Elm all won 5 years apart from each other, they tend to get lumped together.

But then Pitch continues, “He was with me on the victory tour, of course. He was the one who first told me that I’d have to sleep with this woman I never met before, and when I protested, he told me that I didn’t have a choice. He said all I needed to do was follow that woman’s commands and not think about it. I told him that he was out of his mind if he thought I’d had sex with someone against my will, and he said I was an idiot. He begged me to listen to him, but I wouldn’t. And, as I told you, I was punished for that. But Bris. . . . After this went on for awhile, after he saw that I kept getting passed from person to person and that there was no end in sight. . . . He said that he’d rather his tributes die than be forced into this life we lead. I don’t know how much he meant it, but he’s never had a victorious tribute since. . . .”

I draw in a breath, and with it comes a sizzle of anger. What a thing to say. On one hand, I understand that the life after victory is hell, but despite that, I am glad that I didn’t die. Some days are harder than others, sure, but I’m still alive. If Pitch had told me that my life sucked and he wished other tributes would die rather than lead the life I live, I’d probably punch some sense into him.

“So he essentially said he wished you were dead?” I ask with irritation.

Pitch shakes his head. “I’m sure it was hard to watch. It didn’t help that I was also mourning the loss of my mother and sister, and trying to date somebody and failing miserably because I was so fucked up that I couldn’t figure out how to function in a normal relationship while I was being requested frequently by the Capitol elite,” he explains to me. “I think Bris blamed himself somehow, like he was responsible for the Capitol’s interest in me. But it wasn’t him. . . . I just happened to be popular because they had chosen me to be a tribute and then aided me in the arena. So all these people felt entitled to demand things from me that I wasn’t willing to give. . . .” His voice trails off.

These rich assholes figured that he had the “honor” of being chosen, and then they bestowed upon him gifts to help him survive, so now he owed them for everything they had done for him. Like it was a great thing to be forced to fight to the death and he should be thrilled to have been selected from the tens of thousands of kids in the district.

“Don’t be hard on Bris about this,” he tells me suddenly. He absently runs his fingers along the arm of the chair. “He is just as messed up as the rest of us.”

“Yeah, well, the rest of us actually mentor and try to get our tributes through,” I say stubbornly. Though what if we didn’t try? What if we just let our tributes do their own things and thus tell the Capitol that they didn’t own us in this manner? Of course, they’d probably just kill the tributes, but after enough years of this, certainly the Capitol would see that they couldn’t fully control us. . . .

 _Stop it, Juniper,_ I order myself. There’s no point in going down that line of thought. Not only would it end up in a bunch of tributes who die without hope, but everybody’s families would be killed as a result, too. I swallow hard and try to push it away.

Pitch studies me, as though he has figured out the thoughts in my head and wants to tell me that I’m not even allowed to think them because the Capitol can access the secret things I’ve captured inside of me. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead he says, “Bris has had many tributes who have come close to winning. I don’t think he has entirely given up yet.”

I finger the lace at the edge of the dress. What a stupid dress it is, and I’m surprised I didn’t spill anything on it during lunch. Probably because I didn’t eat. If I had spilled something, maybe I wouldn’t have had to complete the rest of the afternoon. . . . _No, you need to stay on track. You need to do what they tell you. They’re watching you, and you can’t slip up and screw up their plans._ I force myself to focus on Pitch and the conversation at hand. On Bris who decided that his tributes weren’t worth it to save.

“But he also isn’t doing any mentoring, so it’s a bit hard to say that he hasn’t given up,” I tell him.

“Maybe he’ll pick it up next year,” Pitch says.

Maybe. But more than likely he sees that there’s a nice crop of young victors who are more than able to do the job that he doesn’t want. So what will it be, Pitch and Elm again? Or Elm and me? Hell, maybe Pitch and I can have a reprise of our phenomenal work last year. I’m sure that the Capitol would love to see us celebrate our first wedding anniversary by teaching kids how to die.

“The other day when your dad was on the phone, he mentioned that he was worried that I’d betray you,” Pitch says after a minute. “I just wanted you to know that I won’t—”

“I’m not afraid you’re going to betray me, Pitch,” I cut him off with irritation. My father was dumb to bring that up. As I said, it’s not appropriate to drag things people did in the arena out of the woodwork to hold against them later in life.

“Yes, but I just wanted you to hear it from me,” he says.

I look up at him and he stares intently right back. He really _does_ want to say it, and he doesn’t want me to interrupt him. For whatever reason, he knows that I trust him, but he wants me to hear it directly from his mouth and not just assume it. So I nod and say, “Sure.”

After a few seconds’ hesitation, Pitch stands up and comes over to where I am on the floor. He sits down across from me so we’re not that far apart. He reaches forward and puts his hand against my cheek.

“You have seen my Hunger Games, as I’m sure you’ve seen all of our Hunger Games in school,” he says to me, his eyes searching mine. “But that’s only the edited version—the pieces they could put together to create a movie for you to watch in class.”

“Pitch, you don’t have to tell me this if you—” I start.

He shakes his head. “I think you’ll understand some things better if I tell you,” he says. He drops his hand away from my face, but his eyes never leave.


	82. Chapter 82

“They chose us to participate in the fifth Quarter Quell,” he begins. “The Capitol citizens received bits of information about random district kids, and in the months preceding the reaping, they narrowed us down. The fewer the potential tributes, the more information they got—we went from just random names and ages to actual people with pictures and school information and extracurricular activities and interests and achievements. There were contests and prizes in the Capitol to encourage the process, but we at home just watched as the numbers dwindled away.

“I had two younger siblings who were reaping age. My sister was knocked out within the first week, and my brother a couple weeks later. I watched as my friends and cousins all dropped from the potential tribute list—there were published lists we could see every day, and our school kept track in real time—and then one day there were only a couple of us left. My friends and family could barely look at me because they knew that the chances were good I’d be chosen. The things that had made me popular in District 7 made me popular in the Capitol, too. I hope I don’t come across as self-centered in saying that I was rather good looking. That was the main draw when the Capitol citizens were shown pictures of us potential tributes. But I was also strong and athletic. I worked in a nearby mill during summers and on weekends. I excelled in classes. I wasn’t some brainless idiot who would throw around his weight in the arena. They came and interviewed us when there were five left—five boys and five girls. It wasn’t a long interview, nor was it formal. They just wanted to harvest more information about us to give to the Capitol citizens. I knew that they had chosen me for my apparent strength. I didn’t realize at the time that they also considered me handsome and that was a major driving factor. So when they asked me about my interests, I told them some bullshit—oh, God, I was so dumb. I told them that I liked sitting quietly in meadows and reading poetry. I thought that I was making myself seem useless but it only made me more desirable. Because the same people who were voting me in were the same people who wanted me in their beds later.”

“That’s disgusting,” I say. “Wait . . . did you actually know any poetry?”

He laughs. “No, I didn’t. But when it came down to just three District 7 male tribute potentials, my dad told me I better start brushing up and bought me a book,” he says. “So I stopped going to class and spent my time trying to memorize all these poems just in case they asked me about anything. Because at that point, I knew that I would be chosen. I continued my weekend job at the mill because I figured that, if anything, would prepare me for the physical aspect of the arena. And when the other two were dropped from the list, and I was officially the District 7 male tribute. . . . Well, by then I had decided that I hated poetry and never wanted to see it again.

“They didn’t give us much time after that. The reaping was two days later, and there was no need for guessing who would be chosen. My district partner was also eighteen. Tall. Strong like me. Absolutely gorgeous. She had been a model for workwear—the sort of stuff that the Capitol residents refuse to model, but somebody has to do it. So they got this girl. Her name was Hannah, and she could handle the axe like a professional.

“Most of us were eighteen. Most of us were strong and good looking. The Careers, of course, had all the training, but it was much harder to write the rest of us off when we were also strong. We might not have all the weapons experience, but we couldn’t be counted out. There were a couple of districts who had younger kids chosen. I mean twelve and thirteen year olds. It was sick to see these little kids next to us older kids. They were tiny, but they were also chosen for their looks, too. Everybody wanted them to be their own children, they said, though I don’t know how true that was because I’m sure that most people don’t want to send their children off to the arena. The stylists had a field day dressing everyone, and it was probably the most well-respected tribute parade anyone’s ever seen.”

“Well respected to whom?” I ask.

“To the Capitol, of course. But even then tributes weren’t put in humiliating outfits. Or, at least, the humiliating outfits looked good on them. Hannah and I were lumberjacks and I think it suited us well. Anyhow, Prep Week continued on, and we went through training as you would expect.

“Behind the scenes, of course, things were different. Most of this I didn’t hear about until afterwards, but the betting started the moment the reaping ended—the earliest that’s officially allowed—and a considerable amount of money went into various tributes. Not the little kids, of course; they were cute, but no one expected them to win. There was a bit of a scandal that I learned about after the fact in which the mentor for one of the girls—District 10 or 11, I think—was trying to sneak their tribute out of the Training Center to get them an early ‘client’ and thus a bit of a boost of financial support. It didn’t work, and that tribute was later killed early on in the arena. Meanwhile in the training room, things were unfolding quite differently from previous years. The competition was tough—there were fewer things to make people stand out, and everyone was guarded and uneasy. There was no Career pack since the Careers themselves realized that they couldn’t count on their strength to give them a good leg up compared to the competition. I allied with the District 2 male and District 4 female.”

“So you were a Career,” I say.

“No more than you are,” he replies. “The term ‘Career’ faded out of existence, if only temporarily, during the 125th Hunger Games. Anyhow, Bris told me that I’d have to do something remarkable to be differentiated from the rest of the tributes. I didn’t exactly think quoting poetry would be that ‘remarkable’ thing, but sure enough, he had me incorporate poetry into my interview. It was terrible—please don’t ever watch it.”

I have to laugh at that and even he smiles a little.

“I’m pretty sure I slept through it when they showed it in class,” I assure him. And I must have because otherwise how the hell would I have forgotten something as dumb as that? Then again, we used to see how much of the Hunger Games we could get away with not watching. It was kind of our own game because the teachers would come around and make sure you were focused once the tributes were released from the pedestals with the sound of the starting gong. But we’d find ways to avoid it if we could. My teachers would restrict bathroom usage for this reason until one kid intentionally peed his pants in protest. He was suspended.

“I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the Capitol loved my interview,” he says. “My ratings went up dramatically which put me at an advantage going into the arena.

“We knew in advance that ‘audience participation’ was going to be a feature of this Hunger Games, but we didn’t know to what extent things would be controlled. All I knew is that Bris told me that I’d have to make sure that the Capitol continued to like me. He explained what demographic I appealed to—take a guess, but I’m sure you can figure that out—and said that I needed to make sure that I continued to appeal to them because they were my greatest financial backers. He explained that sponsorship would be incredibly important in this arena, and I had to make sure that they didn’t lose interest. And that the other tributes were likely being told the same thing, too. So now not only did I have to survive, but I also had to do so while making sure I projected the perfect image to the people who were willing to give me money to keep me alive.

“The arena itself was a forest. Not greatly surprising considering that many arenas are. There were open meadows, but I fortunately was not required to quote poetry. We were far too busy being concerned with staying alive when everything around us was changing without warning. Ten kids died in the bloodbath—including all but one of the little kids—and we soon found out that the seemingly normal forest was sporadic and chaotic. You’ve seen the footage, so you know what I’m saying. Most of the sponsorship gifts weren’t through parachutes, but instead were things like, oh, say, how much water flowed through the river at a time, or how many fish were in that river. If somebody liked a tribute, they’d pay to have water flow through a nearby riverbed. So if you donated a lot, there would be a good stream with plenty of fish, but if you only gave a little, it would be no more than a trickle—but still welcomed to us tributes regardless. Then there were events that people voted on. They’d chose the event and they’d choose which tribute it went after. Of course, nearby tributes weren’t spared. That’s why when the forest spirits went after the District 2 male, they went after the District 4 female and me, too. They killed him, as you know.

“In the arena, we could only speculate to ourselves what was happening. I knew that these seemingly random occurrences weren’t random at all and must have to do with the ‘audience participation.’ Not after the one time I took my shirt off to examine a bite left behind after a flock of fairies attacked us, and a few minutes later water started flowing through the nearby river that had been dry rocks just moments before. It was enough that we were able to wash our wounds and refill our empty water containers. I might have waived it off as being coincidence except that the water turned off the moment that my ally said that she wasn’t going to fully undress to clean her wounds.”

“Okay, that’s sick,” I say.

“They don’t show that in the recapped version,” he says with a rueful smile. “Not everything was related to our bodies, of course—we still had to fight other tributes. Had to fend off muttations and events. When I killed the District 1 male, the District 2 girl and I stumbled across a treasure chest lying in the thick mosses of the forest floor that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Inside were supplies: food, water, medications, a compass. Our rewards for killing.

“There was a feast one day. It wasn’t announced—it just _appeared_ , and the smell of food brought all of us within the vicinity closer. Everybody who ate the food fell into a deep sleep. Only one person ate the food right there at the banquet table, and he was pretty easy to kill off. My ally and I never ate it once we realized what it did, but I know other tributes were desperate enough that they didn’t care. Once they were out of range of the feast and had found what they believed to be a safe place, they indulged in the coma-inducing foods they had acquired. One of them ended up getting killed because she wasn’t quite as well-hidden as she thought she would be.”

“I remember watching that,” I say. “I could never figure out why anyone would be desperate enough to eat that food knowing full well what it did. Not until I was a tribute myself eating cabbages and carrots for so many days straight.”

“Funny what starvation does,” he comments. “My allies and I never got to that point, but there were some who didn’t have the same generous sponsors that we did. Their sponsors were far more fickle, it seemed, and wanted more out of them than just killing a tribute or taking off clothing. Some tributes were even punished by their sponsors with muttations and events. Their sponsors figured that if they were going to shell over money to save them, then the tributes had better be worth it. Most events weren’t meant to wipe out all the tributes but to terrorize us and injure us; if we all died in an event or muttation attack, then that meant that the Capitol would not be able to have as many attacks and thus wouldn’t be able to generate as much money.

“But despite usually having food to eat and water to drink, the arena began to wear on me. I wanted out of there. Nothing was normal. Things didn’t make sense. It seemed like the laws of physics didn’t even apply (especially not after we went into that one part of the arena where the trees were all upside down). I had seen death and killed. I was exhausted from months of worrying about whether I’d be chosen, and then from the slog of Prep Week. One day it was just too much for me. I killed my own ally. In the recap video, they make it seem like she had it coming, like she deserved it in some way or was conspiring against me. But she didn’t deserve it. I just knew that there were five people left, so I slit her throat while she slept after I had promised her that I would keep watch and let her know of any danger. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t the worst way to go, but I knew what I had done regardless. I hated that they rewarded me for it. I found another treasure chest shortly thereafter. When I opened it—you know because you’ve seen this—I found a bloodied heart, still pulsing. Underneath it, as I dug through the fabric inside, I found poison for my axe.

“Poison—something of a coward’s weapon. But I supposed I deserved it after what I did. And as the days passed without cannons and the muttations became more and more aggressive, I knew that it was about time that we had to end this nightmare. Glass-like snow, venomous frogs, murderous trees. . . . One muttation or event after another. So I coated my blade with poison and hunted down the remaining tributes. The poison killed the District 12 female. She was a strong contender after her years in the mines, and I might not have been able to take her down if the poison hadn’t been fast-acting. She writhed in pain as it overtook her body, but by the time I snapped myself out of my stupor, she was already dead and I couldn’t even mercy kill her. When I found the District 3 male, most of the poison had been used up. Still, I managed to get in a good swing. I didn’t kill him because he managed to run away, but the poison weakened him enough that a muttation deer gored him before he could escape later that day.

“Now that there were only two of us left, they turned off the ability for people to pay for muttations and events. Instead we were drawn together for the final battle. There was no more poison on my weapon—what little was left had dried up—and I was on my own against the District 9 male. He was a massive guy with a great swing on the metal pipe he used as a weapon. But ultimately he was no match for me, and I killed him.”

Pitch takes a big breath. I think he might be done, but then he says, “I, like all other tributes, had thought that winning would grand me freedom, and being declared victor was the final hurdle. But, of course, that was only the beginning. Survival in the arena meant nothing compared to what came next.”


	83. Chapter 83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains discussion of rape (no great details).

Pitch’s story has mesmerized me. I had watched what had occurred in the arena in the recap videos. I knew about most of these things, even if I hadn’t known _why_ they occurred. And to know about all the things that they had edited out or not shown us at home because they didn’t want us to see how creepily the Capitol sponsors responded to the tributes. . . .

“For as much as I had done in the arena, I was remarkably undamaged, at least physically,” he continues. “Still, they had to repair a few internal issues and smooth out some scars, and then I spent a couple days in the hospital so they could figure out the logistics of the Presentation. (They didn’t want to make it too soon after I had left the arena because it would ruin the mystery surrounding the new victor. Plus they wanted to make sure it didn’t fall on a weeknight.) So I lay in the hospital and did their exercises to keep in shape and tried not to think about the things I had done. And then came the Presentation—which I did relatively fine during, fortunately—and following that the party.

“Here were all these people telling me how much money they had put towards me, and I knew that they thought that I owed them somehow, but I was young and stupid. I thought that merely talking with them would be good enough; I didn’t dream that they wanted something more from me. At the party, I found a girl about my age who was kind and flirtatious and who would whisper things to me about how various people at the party were stupid or greedy or whatever. She wasn’t like the rest of the Capitolites who acted as though I was a pet. I immediately liked her, and I appreciated her company and the fact that she was so _normal_. . . . But then she said that she wanted to introduce me to ‘Uncle Tommy’ and before I knew it, I was in conversation with the fucking president of Panem himself. She spent the rest of the evening flitting about. I’d see her every now and again, and she’d return to me and flirt some more and disappear to get us drinks that I couldn’t quite choke down. Bris kept his distance until he eventually told me that it was time to leave, but as we headed out into the cool night air, I couldn’t stop thinking about this girl.

“Following the party, there were seven interviews I had to deal with. It took a week and a half because they’d need to reschedule them when I wasn’t feeling well—and by that I mean that I couldn’t cope with whatever was going on—but the Capitol got to see their favorite tribute—now victor—in all his glory. The one they had paid for and who would one day pay them back for their generosity. They worked hard to make sure that I came across as appreciative, confident, and sane. It was a struggle to get me to fit that role, but I eventually managed.

“And then I was free from them. Or so I thought. Although I had left the arena, the Hunger Games never left me. Night after night, I was woken up by dreams from which I could barely escape—you know the ones—and it was pretty typical for a new victor. It was perhaps the most normal of all the things I’d experienced so far. Bris tried to keep me distracted, and he signed me up for things like badminton and swimming and day hikes through the local community center. But as time passed, he kept getting antsy and would actively avoid me. I didn’t really think about it until later when I was reflecting on events.

“Months passed, and when the time for the victory tour came, Bris accompanied me since he was my former mentor. He told me what to do, gave me the cards with the things I was supposed to say. And when I got to the Capitol, he informed me of the additional obligation I now had to fulfill. He gave me an address to visit and explained what was required of me, but he couldn’t meet my eye. I told him I had no desire to do that, and he told me that it didn’t matter because I was a victor now and this is what the Capitol wanted from me. I had to ‘thank’ the people who had paid money to sponsor me in the arena. Of course, back then I didn’t know that it’s not unusual for victors to be expected to have sex with Capitol citizens regardless of personal preference, and Bris tried his hardest to convince me that it was the next step of survival.

“I stayed in the Capitol longer than typical because it was a Quell year and there were so many people who wanted the honor of having dinner with the victor they had generously sponsored. So I was still in the Capitol when I was told that my mom and brother died, and I had to stay in the Capitol while the preparations for the funeral were made. When President Kincaid expressed his sadness at hearing of the loss of my family, he looked me in the eye with a dangerous and eager gleam. And then he gave me to his niece.”

“Wait, I’m sorry, what?” I interrupt. “Firstly, I didn’t know that the president has a niece. Secondly, you slept with one of the president’s relatives?”

Pitch clenches his jaw and I know I’ve struck a nerve. But I can’t help my questions, and I don’t apologize for them, either.

“Yes, I did,” he answers. “She, in all fairness, was pretty confused at first why I was escorted to her room and what she was supposed to do with me. I’ll spare you the details, but she eventually realized what was going on. We were together for nearly a year, during which I spent most of my time in the Capitol with the occasional visit to District 7. I was expected to entertain other clients as well, but her uncle had promised me to her until she grew bored with me.”

“And then she dismissed you?” I ask.

Pitch hesitates. “We grew too close. I told you that I tried to have a relationship with someone after I left the arena,” he says. “She wasn’t like the others; she didn’t see me as a tool or a prize. In a way, she was in the same position herself, having me sprung on her without warning or invite, and not daring to turn down her uncle. He had anticipated that she would grow bored with me within a week or two, but there didn’t appear to be an end in sight, so I was told to end it. I said no. My father died the next day. I subsequently broke off our relationship, and did what I was told.”

Oh.

Oh shit. Okay. I can’t find anything to say that would be appropriate here, not after this. So instead I say, “What happened to her?”

“She lives quietly now,” he says. “She stays away from the cameras, if she can. Fortunately because she is not the president’s direct descendant, she is allowed some anonymity, if you can call it that. She never knew that I broke up with her because I was forced to, but I’d like to think that she was clever enough to figure that out. After all, she knew about my other duties to the Capitol and what was expected of me.

“Anyhow, life continued. I followed their orders. Slept with whoever they wanted me to, and mentored whenever I was told it was my year. Sometimes I only visited the Capitol a couple times a year—like I’ve been doing lately—but other times I was expected to spend most of my time at the disposal of my ‘clients.’ As much as I hated what I had to do, the worst part was when people wanted me to quote poetry for them. I figured that failing to follow this direction would be the absolutely worst reason for a family member to die, so I found myself once again brushing up on poetry. Some of them _only_ wanted poetry which was not the worst thing that they could ask of me, and I’d far rather regurgitate some work by a long-dead poet than perform sexual—you don’t need to know the details, sorry.

“When Elm won in 130, Romulus Wimbledon—you never met him; he died a couple years back—was pushing for District 7 to become a Career district. Tried to get all of us victors on board. The others dragged their feet but wouldn’t give a concrete answer. I said no. My younger sister and older brother died shortly thereafter, and I reversed my opinion on supporting District 7 as a Career district.”

“Pitch, what the hell?” I ask. “This is messed up.”

He only laughs sadly. “I know,” he says. “But what we all go through is messed up. . . . The only thing is that nobody knows because we don’t exactly share it with each other. Everyone knows a bit about what’s going on in each other’s lives, but nobody dares ask.”

True. I know a bit about Esther, and some about Isolde. Esther willingly shared her information with me, but I only know what Isolde told me after some prodding. Nobody goes around and chats about how it’s their umpteenth year mentoring because they failed to show the Capitol their unending support.

Pitch continues, “Elm’s victory made me more desirable. Only five years after winning, and I had a victorious tribute. By that point, I already was a father. The oldest—thirteen now—was conceived well before Elm won, and Garamond and Pliny were already born, but that only seemed to draw ‘clients’ toward me. I had a victorious tribute. The rumors said I had gotten three women pregnant. I guess people thought it was an open invitation. At that point, I wasn’t surprised with a sudden surge in clients after victory, and I was required to stay in the Capitol longer than usual. I hated it because I knew that Elm needed support back in District 7 and I didn’t dare tell him why I had to return to the Capitol so shortly after taking him back to District 7. But I digress. . . . Nobody cared that I wasn’t a presence in the lives of the children I fathered; in fact, nobody was entirely certain who the kids were or that they were even real because I wasn’t listed on their birth certificates. I had nothing to do with them. I was so fucking traumatized by everything, and the first woman who got pregnant didn’t want anything to do with me, so I didn’t bother to try to stay in the children’s lives after their mothers dismissed me from their service. I never wanted the kids, and I was relieved when I had no obligation to be a father to them. Even more relieved—you can appreciate this irony—that Pliny’s father didn’t know a damned thing about me and raised the kid as his own.

“Caecilia was born in the spring of 131. Although my ‘services’ were nothing official—the general public didn’t realize what I was doing because that would shatter the idyllic life after victory the Capitol pushes—the people who were willing and able to request me had their own circle of dialogue, I guess. That’s when Faustina came and told me that I would be in her service until I got her pregnant. She was nice at first. Ridiculously nice. She seemed sympathetic and said that she didn’t want to push me, and I almost believed it. I had to remind myself that by renting my company against my will, she was no better than the rest of them, even if she didn’t make me have sex with her at first; her end goal was for me to get her pregnant regardless of the fact that I didn’t want to. By assuring me that she wasn’t in a rush and I could take my time, it was like she had wanted me to say that I wanted to have sex with her, like I was the one doing the favor—and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And then things suddenly switched and she became aggressive because I wasn’t moving fast enough. It became clear how mentally unbalanced she was. Crying one minute, then yelling at me the next. Telling me that everything was okay only to turn around and berate me for not doing what she wanted. I dreaded the time I spent with her. Usually I can separate myself from—ah, again, I’ll spare you the details. In the end I got her pregnant and for the next several months she would call me up sporadically: sometimes so happy that ‘our baby’ was the size of a loaf of bread (or whatever women use to compare unborn babies to), and sometimes screaming at me for ‘knocking her up’ and abandoning her. I only met Caecilia once after she was born when Faustina insisted that I see ‘our child’ and then she cut me out of her life. Part of me wanted to call her because—um, this is probably stupid—because she had shown me the baby and I wanted to, maybe, I don’t know. See the baby again. But then I remembered how she treated me, and I figured that it would be better if I stayed away.

“At this point, I realized that I had had four children in the span of two years, and heaven only knew if I had more whose mothers hadn’t made me aware of their pregnancies. It was too much for me to know that I had kids out in the Capitol—kids that I didn’t want but had been created anyway. I went to the doctor, but was told that a vasectomy wasn’t authorized. I returned to District 7 only to be told that it wasn’t allowed there, either. By that time I was pretty damned desperate. Fortunately Ferrer managed to get me in with a doctor in District 2. They only did it when I told them that my concern was not for my own personal wellbeing but for the genepool in the Capitol. . . . You wouldn’t want to have a bunch of kids who didn’t know that they were related to end up in the same class in school. I also had to give a pretty good bribe, but at that point, I didn’t care how much I had to pay them.

“My obligations to the Capitol continued, both in terms of keeping people entertained and by mentoring. I’ve already told you about Laurel and what happened when I mentored him during the 137th. After I recovered well enough, I was expected to continue in the Capitol, and I have done as they asked.”

He falls into silence. I stare at my knees, unable to look at him because I know that he’s assessing me for my reaction. What the hell did I just hear? I knew that his life after victory was rough, but this was. . . . I think I’m traumatized just listening to it. But to have actually experienced it? I probably look pretty stunned right now because Pitch says, “It was a lot to hear. I’m sorry.”

“No, I, um. . . . Yes, it was a lot to hear,” I finally manage. No words that I could possibly get out of my mouth right now would be able to convey the sadness that carves into me. I hesitate for a second and say, “But I am glad you told me. All for the message that you won’t slit my throat while I sleep.”

“I had hoped that you’d taken more out of it than that,” he says. I roll my eyes; I had thought that he’d understand I wasn’t entirely serious about that. He clears his throat. “I hope you never have to experience even half of what I have in the Capitol.”

“Me too,” I say even though I’m sure he hasn’t told me nearly all of the stuff he’s had to deal with through the years. I rub my chest briefly as though that’ll stop the ache within me. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is why you never mentioned inviting your family to anything to do with our wedding.”

“Yes, I don’t have much left,” he says. “I have one sister, but she is several years older than me and had moved out by the time I went to the Hunger Games. She had married when I was in junior high and lived in another part of the district with her husband and kids, so she wasn’t around much. Probably is the only thing that’s kept her alive so far, though I’m sure if I mess up, she’s next on the list to go.”

When I was a kid, I’d sometimes moan about being an only child. My parents weren’t too sympathetic and listed off the ways that I should appreciate my situation. I never thought that “not having siblings for the Capitol to murder” would be up there with “never having to share my toys.” But I am oddly grateful that I have no brothers and sisters now, even though I always thought I was missing out on something awesome that my friends had.

“Juniper, the thing is that one day, you’re going to tell your story to another new victor, and they’re going to be just as baffled,” he says. I start and look at him. He smiles sadly at me. “I hope they leave your parents alone—I hope you have learned enough from my mistakes that you do not do anything that leaves your family open as a target—but the Capitol will never let you go through life unscathed. You like reading and books, so I guess in a way you can say that this is your own story, and the things that happen to you are just the details that will one day fill up the pages of that book. I might loathe poetry, but I’ve read enough to know that the things in life that happen to us are just words, sentences, and stanzas—and that individually they often suck and are terrible to read, but eventually— _normally_ —they make something coherent.”

“Coherent, maybe. But not always nice,” I say.

“Of course,” he answers. “Poetry rarely is nice.”

“How do you handle it all?” I ask quietly as I pick at the lace hem again.

He assesses me for a moment without answering.

“I spend as much time as I can outdoors,” he answers. “When I’m home in District 7, I hike around the forests, or sit by a stream, or find a clearing and stare up at the sky. I didn’t understand why I wasted all my time wandering around the forest until I talked with Dr. Castillo. I don’t go out there to avoid what’s happening or to not think about the past. . . . It all returns back to me, but it does so in a manageable way. It’s like the trees and dirt somehow filter everything to make it easier to deal with. And I know that you aren’t a huge fan of ‘Capitol nature’—I can’t say I blame you—but to me, even the manufactured, clearly artificial nature they have here is enough to get me by until I can see real forests again.”

I feel foolish for complaining about all the times he’s dragged me to something that was clearly fake. Everything was too structured and tidy to be real. Nothing about it was rough and raw and beautiful like it is back home. Although I understood that he somehow needed it, I obviously didn’t understand that it was how he managed to cope with all the ways he’s suffered throughout the years. I’m sure my complaints didn’t help matters.

“We can get a cabin somewhere,” I say. “Away from victor village. They’d allow that, wouldn’t they? A place to go for long weekends?”

He smiles at me. “I don’t know. . . . I’ve never thought about it.” Then he reaches out and gestures for me to move closer, which I do. He wraps his arms around me and I press myself against his body. I feel his lips on my hair as he kisses me gently. “Thank you for listening to me.”

It occurs to me that the story he just told me was in a raw, unpolished form and that despite everything he’s gone through, I might have been the first person to hear it all from start to end. All these people he knows, all the people he spends time with—they know about his services; they know about his past. But what they know is only what others have told them. None of them have heard his story from his own lips.

“Thank you for telling me,” I answer. I close my eyes, move my hand against his chest, and feel the steady beating of his heart.


	84. Chapter 84

When I wake up the next morning, Pitch is still asleep. Light peaks in through a gap in the heavy curtains. The alarm hasn’t gone off yet, so I curl up closer to him and try not to think about the fact that there is another long day ahead of us. He’s so peaceful when he sleeps, like everything in his past ceased to exist and only the present remains. I run a finger along his jaw and then his lips and wonder how any of us victors manage to make it long enough to die of old age. Pitch doesn’t deserve what the Capitol has done to him; none of us do. But certainly not somebody like him who was forced to undergo so much just because he was unlucky enough to be chosen by the Capitol citizens. They put him through hell in the arena, and then they did even worse to him once he was out. I feel my anger rising, so I drop my hand away and close my eyes and try to match my breathing with his.

The moment ends with the sudden, sharp beep of a cell phone. I have left my phone in my purse by the door, so I know that it must be his. When it beeps again, Pitch stirs and fumbles around on the end table for a moment, eyes still closed as though he’s trying to hang onto the last few moments of sleep before he has to face the reality of day. At last he grabs the phone, opens his eyes, and brings it to his face.

“Updated itinerary,” he mumbles.

I take the phone from him. He doesn’t protest and just rubs his eyes.

There are four days left, including today; come the fifth day, we’ll finally get married. Daphne has sent an updated itinerary that has even more garbage on it than it did when she gave it to us last week. I scroll through the list with all the dates and time and locations.

“Oh, crap, they signed me up for a massage,” I mutter. The thought of having strangers put their hands on me makes my skin twitch. I know it’s not as bad as what they could do to me, but I still don’t like it.

Pitch takes the phone back from me and searches through the information. “They didn’t sign me up,” he says after a moment.

Lucky. But Pitch only says, “I’ll go with you.”

“Why would you subject yourself to that?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I guess I’d like to spend time with you that doesn’t involve trying to figure out what to do with the kids, or even worrying about the wedding itself,” he answers. “I’ll text Daphne. If that’s okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me, but you have a chance to escape this shit, and you’re willingly volunteering?” I can’t help but think about everything he told me last night. I would have thought that going to a spa for a massage would have been very low on his list of things he wanted to do. But maybe he’s so used to people touching him that it doesn’t matter anymore.

He pulls me into a hug and kisses me. “Yes, well, somebody has to keep you from going off on the masseuse for doing her job,” he says.

I roll my eyes.

I make Pitch give me the phone again so I can finish scanning through the events. There’s not much on here that I’m going to enjoy. After the massage today, there’s an autograph signing that, it specifies, is not part of the wedding plan but something many of the victors have to attend.

“You’ve never been to an autograph signing, right?” Pitch asks as he studies the phone’s screen.

“Nope,” I say. “I can’t wait.”

Then tomorrow there’s a dinner with some people I don’t know in order to celebrate the upcoming wedding. Pitch says that he thinks it’s people who got cut from the list when we went from seven hundred guests to one hundred. Not that we have to have dinner with the other six hundred, but just a few of the chosen people. It occurs to me that I haven’t asked Daphne who is actually on the guest list, and I make a mental note to do that later.

The day after that is a bachelor/bachelorette party which sounds absolutely terrible. That is a custom they have in District 7, too, and it’s never appealed to me. What’s the point of going out and celebrating your last days of being single by drinking in excess if you’re actually _happy_ with the fact that you’re getting married? Some people say they even hire strippers for the occasion. I really, really, _really_ hope that the Capitol doesn’t decide that strippers are a necessary part of this.

The following day is an interview again, and then the rehearsal for the wedding, with dinner to follow. And then, finally, the wedding itself. And all that shit will be over.

 _Remember what Elm said,_ I instruct myself. _You can’t wait for it to be “over” because something just as dumb and frustrating will take its place. Find out how to enjoy the time you have now._

But even that doesn’t fully convince me, not when I have to go to a spa and get a massage. Like it wasn’t bad enough that I have to have cameras in my face all the time and have people ask me personal questions. Now I get to have some random strangers rub their hands on me and I’m supposed to enjoy it.

“We’re almost there,” Pitch says to me as we reach the bottom of the itinerary.

“I know,” I say.

We arrive to the spa for our massages on schedule, but the attendant at the front desk tells us that it will be just a couple of minutes until they’re ready for us. Pitch and I take seats in the comfortable leather armchairs in the lobby. I tap my foot against the floor and wish that they’d just take us back so we can get this over with.

“It’s supposed to help you relax, Juniper,” Pitch whispers to me.

“I don’t need to relax,” I say stubbornly. Obviously I do. But it would probably take a hundred massages to get me to be relaxed enough to deal with the shit that’s constantly thrust into our faces.

Pitch rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says. “You might enjoy it. I promise that it’s not like stuff we had done at the beauty center a few days ago.”

I don’t respond but stare down at the tile floor and try not to scowl too much. Regardless of how I feel about this outing, I’m supposed to come across as the happy, grateful bride who can’t wait to get married and let the world know how generous the Capitol is at the same time. Certainly sitting in here with my arms crossed over my chest and my eyes locked on the floor doesn’t convey that message. So I force myself to sit up straight and try to relax my features, if only just a little. Pitch takes my hand and squeezes it gently.

At last we’re taken into the back, and immediately they try to separate us. The woman explains that we are going to have to get undressed to some degree for today’s “spa day,” and it just wouldn’t be appropriate for Pitch and me to be in the same room while not fully clothed. Not until we’re married, she adds. I hate it. I’m loath to admit that maybe they’re right because while I’ve been stripped naked in front of plenty of strangers as they clean me up and dress me for various events, I’ve never taken off any clothes in front of Pitch before. Still, I hate the fact that they drag me off to a separate room, especially knowing that Pitch went out of his way to go to this damned place to keep me company.

Once I am away from Pitch and my modesty is clearly preserved, they have me strip and wrap a towel around myself and sit in a hot room they call a sauna. It’s so humid that I can barely breathe. Sweat drips down my body, and I want to be out of here immediately. I think I can no longer bear it, but then they lead me out of the tiny room to a bathtub and bathe me. Pitch says this is different than the procedures they do to shape us to their standards of beauty, but I see far more similarities than differences. They still see me as a _thing_ they have to fix up to be in acceptable condition.

As they work on me, they chatter between each other, sometimes trying to engage me in discussion about my wedding. I play along to the best of my ability, and at last they tell me that I can sit in the bathtub for another few minutes. They flush out the water so that the new water is warm again and clean. It’s scented with a floral odor that’s not unpleasant but I can barely stomach regardless.

 _Get ahold of yourself, Juniper,_ I scold. _They’re not doing anything worse than what they’ve already done. This is a breeze compared to all the scrubbing and waxing last week._

I know I’m being stubborn. I don’t want to be here, so I won’t let myself enjoy what’s going on. Not that I really _like_ it, but it’s not entirely unpleasant, either. As I sit stewing in the tub, I try to coax myself to relax, if only a little. Just enough so that this isn’t miserable.

Instead I find myself wondering how Pitch is doing, and if he’s surviving this okay. I should be with him. I shouldn’t have let them separate us. . . .

_And done what? Gotten in a fistfight with the staff? Don’t be an idiot._

I close my eyes and focus on the warm water flowing in around me while a small drain allows the water at the bottom to move out. It provides a constant flow—almost imperceptible. But I feel it, and I focus on it. I hold onto the movement of the water around my body, and I force myself to breathe steadily.

At long last, they come and tell me that it’s time to move onto the next station. They wrap a towel around me. When I’m dry, they give me underwear and drape a robe around my shoulders. I tie it off in the front, and they lead me to another room. Relaxing music plays in the distance, along with the sound of a gurgling stream. The masseuse introduces herself and tells me what to expect and then has me lay down and the massage begins. I close my eyes and pretend that I like what’s going on. After a few minutes, the masseuse comments that I’m finally starting to relax.

Maybe I am. I don’t want to because it means that I’m enjoying something the Capitol has forced upon me. And yet, if I’m supposed to find happiness despite what’s going on around me. . . . At this point, I don’t know what to think. A strong, sweet and smoky aroma fills the room, and I feel my body and mind relaxing.

At last the massage ends, and then they give me a “facial” which is little better than some of the skin-ripping procedures, but at least this one doesn’t remove any of my face. It’s soothing, or maybe that’s just the crap they’re pumping into the room to sedate me. When this is finished, I’m groggy and a little disoriented, but they lead me back to another room where I’m returned my clothes and given permission to change. Once I do, they take me to the lobby and release me.

Pitch says that I look more relaxed, and I narrowly avoid glaring at him because I’m still feeling a little hazy. I just shrug and the two of us head out of the spa.

The sudden fresh air jolts me awake, and I don’t feel nearly as sedated as I was moments before. I take a couple of breaths and allow it to clear my head.

“Did you know that they were going to separate us?” I demand.

“Nope,” he replies. He leads us down the walkway and towards the sidewalk.

“Really? Because I’m pretty much convinced that you knew and just wanted to go to the spa,” I reply.

He laughs and then looks at me. “I promise, I didn’t know,” he says.

I study him hard, and eventually his smile falters, if only just a little. “You know, I was thinking that at some point, we should go on a date.”

“A date?” I ask, eyebrow raised. We pause at the sidewalk to hail a taxi to take us to our next destination.

“Yes, it’s what people normally do when they’re together in a relationship,” he says. “It’s—”

“I know what a date is,” I snap. “I just don’t understand what you mean.”

A cab slows down in front of us.

“We literally have never been on a date,” he says to me as he reaches out for the door handle. “Though we probably won’t likely get a chance until after we’re married.”

He opens the door for me and I climb inside. He follows and closes the door behind him, then gives the driver the address of our next location.

I never really thought about it because it obviously wasn’t a priority, but we really have never been on a proper date. We’ve been to restaurants and sat in parks and whatever else, but all of that was only as friends, or because we needed to get away from the chaos of the Hunger Games. The two of us have never set out with the intention of being on a date.

 _Well of course not. Because when you came to the Capitol, you_ weren’t _dating. And now you’re engaged._ I’m not exactly on the typical route to marriage here, so I shouldn’t be surprised that we missed that vital step in our relationship. But it does feel a little weird to know we’ve bypassed it. No wonder my parents think that this marriage is too rushed. I’m such an idiot for thinking that they’d understand that Pitch and my relationship was different. How the hell were they supposed to know that it was _that_ different?

I watch the streets go by and I wonder if I even want to go on a date with Pitch. In some way, it would imply that I’m romantically attracted to him, and I’m not. . . . I think. I actually don’t know what’s going on, so maybe it’s better not to broach the subject and skip the dates so I don’t need to stress about it. . . . But if Pitch thinks that it’s something we should do, then I’m not going to stop him. And, anyway, I like spending time with him. It would be nice to do something together that’s not out of our hatred for the Capitol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little trip to get a massage wasn't something that was supposed to be an entire chapter. It was actually just a paragraph, but then I started adding more stuff and had to make it a separate chapter from the next. As we can see, this is why I can't write a short story.


	85. Chapter 85

Esther and Maximus bring the kids to the autograph signing since Esther is required to be there as well. It takes place in a bookstore—not Quintus’, for better or worse—and the employees have set up a long L-shaped table with a couple dozen chairs behind it. Each spot is clearly marked to designate who sits where, with “District 1: Isolde” at one end of the table and “District 12: Terra” at the other end. There’s not room for every victor, so obviously some lucky people weren’t expected to be here. Victors mill about, and I know most of their faces.

“Why are there so many victors here?” I ask Pitch as we settle into our designated seats. Esther is assigned to sit on the other side of Pitch, but she’s giving Maximus last-minute instructions with the kids. “I thought everyone went back home after the Presentation and party.”

“They have us to thank,” he says. “I checked out the guest list and most of them are on it. The only ones that haven’t been invited are people that neither you nor I have spent much time around.”

That only further emphasizes how much they track our movements if the know who we hang out with. I pick up the pen on the table in front of me. Every seat has a pen in front of it, and every few seats there is a bucket with more pens, as though we’re either going to lose the ones they gave us or run out of ink.

 _I can get through this,_ I tell myself. _You’re not alone. You have Pitch. You have the other victors. You’re fine._

So I take a deep breath and reassure myself that signing a bunch of papers or whatever they give us won’t be that bad.

“Since you’ve never been to one of these, I’ll give you the run-down,” Pitch whispers to me. Other victors wander around the area, and some begin to take their seats. None of them look freaked out about this, and I know I’m foolish for getting myself worked up. He continues, “They’re going to line up down near Isolde and Hammer, and then they just go down the row. Most people have autograph books of some sort, so don’t be alarmed if they show you something that is a little . . . commercial, okay? Some people make their own scrapbooks. Others just want you to sign a piece of paper or an item that’s important to them. A few don’t bother with anything that lasts and want you to sign their arm or something odd. They’re required to keep their clothes on, but they still get pretty creative.”

“I am not signing someone’s ass,” I hiss at him.

He laughs. “I’ve only seen someone try that once, and he was removed by security,” he tells me. But then he says more seriously, “Anyway, most people will want to talk with you, even if it’s just to say hi. Please, Juniper, please try to be polite to them. If it helps, pretend like you’re back in District 7 and these people are not Capitol citizens. I don’t care.”

“You have no faith in me,” I mutter, but I know it’s true. I can’t look at these people with the complete disdain I feel inside. The idea that they’re going to talk to me and not just thrust an autograph book in my face for me to sign is a little overwhelming.

“If I didn’t have faith in you, then there would be no point in telling you this,” he says. “I believe you can pull it off—you just need a reminder.”

I don’t need to be told that we’re being judged by the unseen forces of the Capitol and we have to pretend to be grateful for whatever opportunities they give us. That knowledge is a constant presence in my face.

One of the coordinators then calls out for everyone to take their seats, and it takes a minute or two for all the victors present to get themselves situated. Elm ambles over and sits down on my other side. He smells only vaguely like alcohol; as long as others aren’t intentionally sniffing him, they might not pick it up.

This section of the bookstore is empty, save for us victors and the staff. They’ve blocked it off so that people can’t get through unless they’re allowed access at the beginning of the line near Isolde. But elsewhere in the store, people are allowed to peruse the aisles and look for books. I wonder why they chose a bookstore, and why not Quintus’. But that only gets me thinking about Martha, and I wonder again about a possible connection between the two. I sit up straight and adjust my chair as I try to pull myself back to the present.

Now that all the victors are seated, the doors to the bookstore are opened, and people are allowed to come in. The coordinators direct the first few people to where Isolde sits. Because the bend in the table is between Districts 6 and 7, I can very clearly see the excited Capitolites harass the District 1 victors, eagerly thrusting their autograph books towards them and chatting so much that the coordinator tells them that they have to move along. Since Isolde mentored Europa (who was not required to be here), she’s the next best thing to the newest victor. Then next up after harassing District 1, they move on to District 2.

“They should have given Isolde her own separate table,” Elm comments as he taps his pen against the tabletop. “Then the rest of us can just get on with it.”

If only. Having Isolde at the front only drags out the inevitable, but people eventually start trickling down the line. Then the first person reaches our little District 7 group, and she just gushes over how wonderful we are and that people might not call us their favorite district but they still root for us each time the Hunger Games come around. I follow Elm’s lead and sign her autograph book. Pitch was right: it’s incredibly commercialized. Official Hunger Games merchandise. Each page has a picture of the victor, the year and a few stats, and a place for us to sign. I swallow my disgust and pretend like it doesn’t bother me.

And so on and so forth. So many people come up, a never-ending stream of bloodthirsty folk who are just ecstatic to be here with so many victors. They ask us about the wedding, and some tell me how lucky I am while others tell Pitch how lucky he is. They comment about the Hunger Games and how sad they were when Sage was killed because they really wanted to see him get over the lava river or he had great potential or he was such a funny kid. None of these words seem to bother Pitch, and he engages them in brief conversation and signs their books and papers and whatever else without flinching.

I’m relieved when I see Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune with Maximus in tow because it means that I get a brief break from telling people that I’m not actually secretly pregnant, or ducking comments about Pitch’s and my sex life (still just as non-existent as last year thanks, but they don’t need to know that), or answering for the trillionth time that my escort has already finalized the guest list and we’re not adding anyone else. The kids are completely blown away by this opportunity to meet everyone. I gather from the way they talk that it’s very rare to have an autograph session with more than a handful of victors. Many of the victors know enough about who these kids are now, and they spend a little more time with them than they do the other people who come through the line.

“This is so much fun,” Caecilia says. “I can’t _believe_ I have so many signatures.”

Maximus must’ve bought them notebooks for this event because each of them has his or her own blank spiral-bound book where they’re gathering signatures.

But seeing the kids with us only draws attention from other people in line. The people closest to us turn away from the victors in front of them to watch the kids tell us all about who they’ve met, and they drink in our interaction with great fervor. Neptune twirls around as she babbles about how she got to meet Isolde, and she hopes that soon she’ll get to meet Europa, too. As the onlookers eye us carefully, it occurs to me that maybe we really shouldn’t have let the kids come with us; I don’t like the way that they eagerly size up the three of them as though they’re here as part of the spectacle and not as observers.

“May I get a photograph?” one woman comes over and asks.

“At this time, I’m still trying to give them their privacy,” Pitch says politely. “But thank you for asking.”

The woman sighs, but she nods and disappears back into the crowd. When I scan the line of nearby people, they avert their eyes as though they don’t want to get told that they can’t interfere in the children’s private lives. We tell the kids that they have to move along, and they nod. Neptune giggles when she realizes that Esther is next, and she slides her notebook over to her.

The line continues onward. But now I can’t help but glance around for the kids every now and again, as though I’m afraid somebody has swooped up and kidnapped them while we’re stuck here scrawling our names in people’s autograph books.

At last, nearly three hours after the event started, the line begins to dwindle. It’s not because of a lack of people—there is still a line outside the bookstore—but there’s a limited amount of time for the event and the bookstore needs to return to regular business. Not that, of course, this autograph signing has taken away from their business because as soon as the people finish collecting signatures, they’re allowed to wander the bookstore as they please and spend money they weren’t expecting to spend.

We victors are excused, and I stand up and stretch my legs. Pitch hoists himself to his feet.

“Let’s go find the kids,” he says. We untangle ourselves from the chair and Esther joins us as we move away from the tables and into the aisles of books. I’m so exhausted from trying to keep a smile on my face for so long that I don’t even care that we’re surrounded by endless expanses of literature. Instead my eyes search only for Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune.

We leave an aisle and find Caecilia and Neptune talking with a man and woman. Caecilia has a polite smile on her face, but Neptune is just beaming and chattering with these people. As we approach, I pick up enough of their conversation to realize that these people don’t actually know the kids—they’re just trying to get them to talk with them because they’re children of a victor. And Neptune is just enjoying the attention.

The moment that Caecilia sees us, relief washes across her face and her smile grows wider.

“Is everything going okay?” Pitch asks the man and woman.

“Oh, yes,” says the man. And the woman adds, “You have such dear little daughters.”

“Thank you,” Pitch says, but it’s less of a statement of appreciation and more of a formality. He moves over and takes Neptune’s hand to break the girl of her enchantment. Caecilia moves partially behind him so that he is between her and the man and woman. I look around for Maximus but see him nowhere. Esther shifts around and cranes her neck to look beyond the nearest shelf of books, clearly distressed that Maximus and Pliny are nowhere to be found.

“If you will excuse us,” Pitch says, and he leads the girls away. Esther and I hurry after him, and it’s only a moment later before Maximus and Pliny find us.

“Where were you?” Esther demands.

“I had to use the restroom,” Pliny says.

“I wanted to take him so he wouldn’t get mobbed,” Maximus further explains. Which makes sense since the restrooms are relatively close to the signing table. “Is everything okay?”

“Found the girls with a couple of strangers,” Pitch says.

Maximus reddens. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think. I thought they would be fine out of the way and they’d draw more attention if they came with us.”

Pitch looks like he might carry on with it, but all he says is, “It’s okay. Thank you for keeping an eye on them while we were signing.”

Maximus nods. “You’re welcome,” he says. He looks rather embarrassed, but nobody says more about the situation. In normal circumstances, leaving an eight year old and eleven year old in a bookstore for three minutes would have been fine. But these are not normal circumstances. Though what strikes me the most is not the fact that people immediately honed in on the girls the first chance they got, but that Maximus didn’t even think they’d be targets for people seeking a bit of drama and fame. It’s like it never occurred to him that there were people weird enough out there to do that. And I wonder if he didn’t think it was a possibility, maybe it shows that the obsessive, inappropriate behavior is not something widespread or prevalent. Maybe I’m just getting my hopes up, but what if the crazy people we see are not representative of the whole?

_Perhaps they’re not all as nuts as I thought they are._

And yet, that only makes things more confusing.


	86. Chapter 86

Pitch spends a good chunk of the remaining afternoon in the bedroom on the phone with the lawyer. I take it upon myself to buy the kids some toys so that they’re not sitting in front of the television all day, but I say that they have to be educational. Then I pay a ridiculous amount of money to have a bunch of these weird building block things sent to the house on rush delivery. Pliny assures me that it’s money well spent and that he and Neptune used to play with them for entire afternoons. I can’t see how it’ll keep the kids entertained, but an hour later, the four of us and Elm are engrossed in a competition to see who can build the most awesome house for the little doll people that come with the set. Needless to say, Pitch looks very confused when he comes out of the room.

“Juniper, can I see you for a second?” he asks.

I push my blocks over to Neptune and tell her that she can incorporate my house into hers, and then I climb to my feet and follow Pitch to the bedroom.

“Both Faustina and Plinius are denied the ability to take their children out of this house without further discussion,” he tells me as soon as the door is closed. “They will go back to their mothers after the wedding while we’re on our honeymoon, and what happens after that is still being decided.”

Wait. Something was decided in our favor?

“I don’t think I understand the system,” I say.

Pitch laughs humorlessly. “I think I know enough about the system to say that they make good propaganda for the wedding,” he says.

He’s not wrong. And by having the kids tag along to random places, I’m finding myself focusing less on the personal intrusion of the events and more on the kids themselves, so I guess they’re also keeping me in line, too. But I hate that the sole reason that they’re being allowed to stay with us is not because of Pitch’s parental rights but because they’re another cog in the machine that makes the Capitol function.

“What do you have in your hand?” Pitch asks.

I look down at my fist and slowly unclench my fingers to reveal one of the building blocks I had inadvertently taken with me.

“I hope it’s okay I bought them stuff,” I tell him.

“Well, it’s not like this apartment was furnished with things to keep kids occupied,” Pitch says with a shrug. He holds out his hand and I place the block in it. It’s about an inch long and blue, with little nubs to attach it to other building blocks. He turns it over between his fingers. “When things get settled, there’s a possibility they will be with us, at least a few months out of the year.”

“I know,” I say. I’ve already voiced my concerns to him about dealing with kids, and it’s not like anything has changed since yesterday. He hands me back the block and I take it from him.

I run my fingers over the small block. About a month ago, I came to the Capitol knowing that things would be different and I would leave this place changed. But I never, not in a million years, expected even half the things that have happened. I knew that they might bother Pitch and me about our relationship, and I knew that the tributes from District 7 would die. But to end up married and with preteen children? To know that Pitch’s tribute was intentionally murdered because of something Pitch did? Hell, even to hear Pitch’s story wasn’t something I was expecting.

And then we’ll go home, and try to live our lives and next year it’ll be repeated all over again. All part of the story Pitch says that I’m writing, that one day I’ll tell another new victor and it will shock them. I suppose it will. What’s happening to us between Martha and the wedding planning and the children, it’s nothing that anyone, victor or not, would ever really expect. Others can see what happens, but like in Pitch’s story, they don’t know _why_ it happens.

“Pitch,” I start, not certain what I’m going to say. He watches me intently, and I force myself to continue, “You said yesterday that the tributes we don’t save end up haunting us. . . . I went to visit Rosa’s family.”

“Why?” he asks carefully. “I know that Lala said you were supposed to, but literally none of us ever do that. . . .”

“I know. It wasn’t because she told me to do it,” I say. “But I couldn’t get Rosa out of my head, and it was really wearing on me. It was interfering with everything—sleep, school. Couldn’t even read. And I thought that maybe if it had been my family member who had died, I’d like to hear somebody say something nice about her. Something that’s not from the Capitol, you know?

“But that’s not how it went. I found out where they were and made sure it was okay to meet up in advance. Then I went out to visit them, and they were. . . .”

I falter.

For some reason, I didn’t think this would be so hard to say. But it is. I can’t even look at Pitch right now, and I stare at the little block in my hands.

“I told them how brave she was, and how clever and smart and everything. How it had been an honor to work with her and I wished that the outcome had been different. . . . And then her dad just looked at me and told me that I had failed her.”

“Shit, Juniper—” Pitch starts, but I shake my head and continue.

“He said that if you had been her mentor, then she would have been our victor and that they shouldn’t have trusted somebody who was only in her first year to be in charge of a child,” I say. I take a deep, shaky breath. “I expected somebody in her family to say that he was just upset about her death and to make some sort of excuse for him, but nobody did. Her mom, her siblings. . . . They all just sat there staring at me. Then her mom asked me if I had any siblings, so I told her no, and then she said that maybe one day I’d have a child and know what it was like to fear having her name in the reaping ball. I tried to tell them that I had done the best I could for her, but they said that there was no point wasting words about it now because Rosa was dead and nothing I’d say would bring her back. . . . To my credit, I waited until I was back in my dorm room before I started crying.”

I pause as I try to gather my thoughts. Pitch doesn’t interrupt me. I force myself to breathe once, twice. Because if Pitch could be honest with me, then I think I can be honest with him, even if I don’t want to admit it. I lick my lips and continue.

“I wasn’t entirely honest with you why I came to the Capitol this time. I mean, I wanted to keep you company, but also . . . I didn’t want to be left alone. I was terrified of sleeping for weeks prior. I almost failed my classes because I couldn’t concentrate on the final exams. I see Rosa everywhere in everything that I do, and I thought that the Hunger Games would make it worse. So I figured that I might as well go to the Capitol because you would be there, and so were Esther and Isolde, and at least I’d be distracted enough, I hoped. . . .”

I half expect to find tears rolling down my cheeks, but there’s nothing. I think I’m too empty. Dehydrated of emotions or something. I finally dare to look up at Pitch, and he stares back at me with sorrow.

“I very rarely go to visit the family of tributes,” he tells me. “It’s hard to know what you’re going to get. I’m sorry, Juniper. I wish you had told me. . . . I would have gone with you.”

“After giving me a lecture about why I shouldn’t doing it,” I point out. “I didn’t need that. I just needed to _do_ it. Of course, I thought that the worst I’d get was the cold shoulder.”

He studies me. There’s something in his expression I can’t read.

“Rosa was a different tribute,” he says. “Every tribute we mentor deserves to be treated with respect and to be given the chance he or she deserves. But sometimes there are tributes who stand out more than others for various reasons. Rosa was one of those. Between having a tribute like her and it being your first year mentoring, I’m not surprised that you’re having trouble dealing with her death.”

“Well, it’s not that I’m having trouble dealing with her death. I know that she died,” I say. “It’s just that she _shouldn’t_ have died.”

“That’s still having trouble dealing with it,” he says. “All these kids who die in the arena shouldn’t have died. But they do. And we have to figure out how to come to terms with the fact that they’re gone.”

“How do we do that?” I ask.

“I wish I could tell you,” he answers. “But that eludes even me. . . . Did coming to the Capitol work in distracting you?”

I exhale sharply. “Mostly. But only because there were worse things to think about, I guess,” I admit. “Not that I think her death wasn’t bad, but I can’t do anything about it at this point. Sometimes . . . sometimes I still dream about her. . . .”

He nods. “You mumble her name in your sleep sometimes,” he says.

Although it’s probably embarrassing, I don’t feel embarrassed at all. Rosa was a good kid. I liked her even when I didn’t like her. She didn’t deserve the ending she got, and now as my punishment for failing to save her, she’ll follow me around until I finally die.

“So they never leave us. . . .” I say.

“No,” he answers. “But we still have to go on with life. We can’t let it interfere. . . .”

Because that’s how it drives you insane. That’s how you start wondering if life is even worth living and that maybe things would be better if you’re dead because you have so many ghosts staring you down that you don’t think you could add another one to your collection. If you die, do all those ghosts get set free, or are they still attached to you for eternity?

“Juniper, I don’t know what we’re going to do with Pliny, Neptune, and Caecilia, but we can’t let the fact that we’ve had unsuccessful tributes in the past dictate how we’re going to proceed,” he tells me.

“Just like how we can’t let the things that happened in the arena influence our decision to get married,” I say.

He reaches out and touches my cheek. His thumb gently strokes my cheekbone. “The past creeps up when we least expect it,” he says. “But we can’t let it ruin our future.”


	87. Chapter 87

We order dinner in and continue the block-building contest. Caecilia invites Pitch to join her “team,” and I tell Neptune that we’re going to be together because she has my blocks, too. After we eat, Elm thanks us for letting him join and then heads to his room to drink. We divide up his blocks between the remaining houses and continue building.

“You three will be staying with Juniper and me until the wedding,” Pitch tells the kids after we’ve been building for a bit. Neptune and I are working on a moat to go around the house. I glance up and see that Pitch and Caecilia have built something more akin to a castle. Pliny, on the other hand, is working on an absolute masterpiece of a mansion. But all three of them abandon their buildings as they take in what Pitch said. “We’re still working out what happens after that, but . . . I’d like you guys to know that if you end up living with Juniper and me—even only some of the time—we’re more than happy to have you with us.”

“I want to live in this house because there are alligators in the moat,” Neptune says as she makes one of the doll people fall in and scream as he’s eaten by invisible alligators.

If there’s one kid here who’s going to end up as a gamemaker, it’s probably not Caecilia.

When none of the kids say anything further, Pitch goes back to building his house. The chatter that previously accompanied building has stopped as the kids contemplate what Pitch just told them. Except for Neptune who continues to sacrifice people to the alligators. Other than the whispered screams and munching noises, the only other sound is the shuffling of building blocks as people rifle through their piles.

“If we stay with you, will we be in the Capitol or District 7?” Pliny asks after a couple minutes.

Pitch pops a building block in place on a castle turret and looks up at Pliny. “I don’t know,” he says. “It depends on what is decided.”

“Who decides?” the boy follows.

“We’ve . . . had to get some lawyers involved,” Pitch admits. “To make sure that everything’s as fair as we can make it. Regardless of where you are or who you’re with, we all want you guys to have normal childhoods and to not have your lives disrupted because Juniper and I are victors. We’re doing our best to keep you out of the spotlight and—”

“But we were on television,” Neptune interrupts.

“Yes, sometimes there are programs, like for the wedding, and that can’t be helped,” he explains.

“No, we were on television today, at the book signing,” she clarifies.

Pitch’s brow furrows and he looks between the three of them. “They have you on television?” he asks sharply.

For a second, none of them answer. They might have misinterpreted Pitch’s irritation at the Capitol as anger towards them. But then Pliny says, “It was on the news today. We just got a quick glimpse before Elm turned off the television.”

“He said his head hurt,” Neptune adds.

Pitch stretches out his hand towards the coffee table and picks up the remote. He turns it to the screen and presses the “on” button. After a few channel changes, he eventually finds a news program, though we have to wait for them to finish up a segment in which they interview one of the gamemakers. Finally they get to coverage of the autograph signing, and they immediately reveal that not one but _three_ of Pitch’s children were there. They have all of the information about each of them—names, ages, school photos—and the reporter and news anchor go on about how lovely the five of us looked and how much we apparently love each other and how exciting it is that the children are being involved in the wedding.

“Eight-year-old Neptune Corvinus and her brother twelve-year-old Pliny Corvinus as well as eleven-year-old Caecilia Vitus have been identified as District 7 victor Pitch Yassen’s children,” the reporter recaps for anyone who couldn’t catch it the first ten times. “Pitch Yassen and fellow District 7 victor, Juniper Sadik, have recently made headlines for their upcoming wedding. However, the fact that Pitch has children has only been discovered in the past few days.”

“Did they know that Pitch was their father?” the news anchor asks. “Or is this recent news?”

“That is unclear at this time,” the reporter replies. “We are hoping to have an interview with them in the next few days. Our attempts to contact their mothers have been unsuccessful, but as soon as we hear any news, we’ll let you know.”

“Thank you so much for bringing us this exciting news,” the anchor replies. The camera switches back to the newsroom, and the anchor turns to the co-anchor. “How wonderful to know this, right Bill? Can you imagine being the child of a victor? That must be wonderful.”

Pitch mutes the television. He sets the controller down and rubs his cheek, immediately losing himself in thought. I jam a couple of bricks together so that I don’t have to think about how they managed to get footage of the kids chatting with us at the autograph table without anyone noticing. Somebody must’ve used their cell phone while we were too engrossed in the children.

“Are they really going to interview us?” Caecilia asks.

“Not if I can help it,” Pitch replies as her words break him from his thoughts. “I’m serious about not wanting you guys to be harassed by the media.”

Caecilia lets out a breath and nods. Neptune, on the other hand, remains glued to the television. Even when the others go back to building their houses, she can’t tear her eyes away from the flickering lights. The news has long since moved on to other things, but she’s entranced by the glow—and by what she’s heard. She’s eight years old and her life has changed dramatically. She is the daughter of a victor, and her wildest dreams are coming true. I nudge her and she turns away from the television and picks up a piece of the house.

These assholes really want to invade the kids’ personal lives after Pitch has been clear that he’s trying to keep them out of the spotlight. But he is a victor, and it doesn’t matter what a victor says. If the viewers at home really want to see the kids, the Capitol will twist his arm and back him into a corner in order to get what they want. I focus on setting a block in place to try to take my mind off the television, but I can’t help that the flickers of light occasionally catch my eye. I wish that Pitch had turned it off entirely, but I am too irritated to do more than keep building my house.

“We need a swimming pool here,” I tell Neptune as I point toward an open area in a first-floor room. “Without alligators. So our people can go swimming.”

“Maybe it can have alligators when they aren’t swimming, and then when they want to swim, the alligators go outside to the moat,” she replies as she starts to build a bridge over the moat.

I don’t like this kid’s obsession with alligators, so I say, “Wouldn’t the unicorns be afraid of the alligators?”

“No, the unicorns are magical,” she says. “They tell the alligators what to do using their minds.”

Right, okay. That makes sense. But I don’t push it any further and allow the imaginary telepathic unicorns to do their thing to keep the equally imaginary alligators in line. I focus on creating the first layer of the pool—it will be raised above ground since I can’t build down into the underlying “ground” level—when out of the corner of my eye, I see Caecilia grab the remote. I look up in time as she unmutes it.

There, on television, is her mother. She sits in a quaint room with a painting of mountains and an intricately-carved lamp behind her. Next to her is Janice Lovely.

“I have with me today Faustina Vitus, mother of Caecilia Vitus,” Janice begins.

Pitch clears his throat. “I want you three to go to the library,” he tells them.

Caecilia shakes her head, so Pitch says firmly, “ _Now._ ”

The three of them look between each other. On screen, Janice explains that Faustina came forward to make sure that we have the full report of what’s going on. Pitch gestures towards the library, and the three of them slowly hoist themselves to their feet and head off to the room.

“And close the door,” Pitch orders. One of them slams it to make it clear that it is closed.

Pitch turns back to the television, and I do the same.

“. . . Yes, I am so excited to be here,” Faustina is saying. And does she look it. She has her hair and makeup done. Her dress is crisp and flawless. Her smile never once wavers and her eyes shine with happiness.

“So you have come forward with us to tell us all about how this unfolded,” Janice says, and Faustina nods. The Hunger Games announcer continues, “We are so eager to hear what you have to say, so maybe I’ll let you have the microphone to start out, so to speak. Is that okay?”

“Oh yes,” Faustina replies.

Pitch moves next to me. We both sit on the floor, but now our backs are against the couch. I lean into him and try to remember that what’s happening is on the television and there is literally nothing I can do about it so there’s no point in getting too worked up. I know that whatever Faustina is about to say is going to be an outright lie, and she will not spare Pitch’s feelings unless it suits her.

The woman continues, “Pitch and I were so thrilled when we found out we were pregnant. We were only together a few months, but Caecilia was such a wonderful surprise. She was always such a happy baby—the sort that every mother dreams about. Everybody would say how calm she was and how lucky I was. And I knew that I had to be lucky to be blessed with a child like her. She was such a beautiful baby, too, with Pitch’s grey eyes and a chubby, round face. People would stop me on the street to say that she was just so gorgeous that she should be a model.”

“She sounds like a beautiful baby. And what did Pitch say about all this?” Janice asks. She watches Faustina intently, absolutely enraptured by her story.

“Well, you know how some men are,” she says, her voice reflecting a casual irritation like dealing with “some men” is an everyday occurrence that you just get used to. “He got cold feet. Once Caecilia was part of our lives, he realized that our priorities changed. Or, well, _my_ priorities changed. He still had one thing in mind, and so he left me for another woman.”

“Bullshit,” I say. But Pitch remains silent.

“What about Caecilia?” Janice asks. “Did she know about her father and who he was?”

“Of course I raised her to know,” Faustina answers. “He is a victor, and she is proud of that. But he is also a busy man, and whenever he came to the Capitol, he had his duty to his tributes. I wouldn’t dream of disrupting his work.”

“Was he part of Caecilia’s life?”

“Oh, well, I wanted him to be,” she lies. “I didn’t understand why he had no interest in meeting her, but recently when I found out that he has other children as well—none he’d ever met, might I add—I realized that he was _busy_ in many ways and the children he fathered weren’t his priority in life.”

Janice hesitates. Despite the fact that she’s completely taken by Faustina’s story, concern crosses her face for the briefest of moments. “It’s hard to imagine the Pitch we know and love would have that sort of attitude toward his own children,” she says.

“I know him a little better than most people, Janice, and I can’t say that I’m too surprised,” Faustina ‘admits.’ She smiles sadly at the announcer. “He’s very lovely. Very charming and seductive. But the idea of being a father was not something he was comfortable with, not when everything was said and done. I’m sure he _wanted_ to be there for Caecilia—she was such a beautiful baby—but everybody has their flaws, and this one is his.”

“So Caecilia grew up without a father?” Janice asks.

“Yes, she did,” Faustina replies.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement. I jerk around to find Caecilia walking closer towards the couch, her eyes on the television. She needs to go back in the room, but I can’t bring myself to say anything, not when it’s her mother on the television talking all about her personal life as a child. Pitch sees, too, but when Faustina starts talking again, we both turn back to the screen.

“She was always so proud of being the child of a victor, especially one who fought so valiantly in the arena,” she says. “She had hoped one day to meet him, and I always knew she would when the time was right. . . .”

“What made now the right time?” Janice asks.

Caecilia comes around to the front of the couch and sinks down on the floor next to Pitch.

“Pitch is going to be starting a new phase in life, and when I saw that he was finally settling down with Juniper, I knew that he had changed,” Faustina explains. “I knew that he would be happy to have a chance to be a proper father, and he would love to meet Caecilia. She’s a brilliant girl. Always gets the best grades in school. They’re so much alike, and I can only imagine that they’re having the time of their lives right now, finally able to spend a few days with each other after being apart so long.”

“It honestly sounds like a dream come true for Caecilia,” Janice says. “Have you heard from her since she’s been with Pitch?”

“Yes, she called me the other day to tell me how happy she is that I introduced them,” she says. I don’t know if it’s a lie or not; it occurs to me that maybe Caecilia did call her and we just didn’t notice. But the thought falls to the back of my mind as the interview once again grips me. “And I’m just so happy for her. Obviously I want her back home soon, but to know that she’s catching up on lost time and she has been so well loved by both Pitch and Juniper is just a wonderful thing. . . . I look forward to seeing her after the wedding, and I am eager to hear from her everything they’ve done together.”

“Do you think she would be available for an interview?” Janice asks.

“Oh absolutely,” Faustina says, her eyes sparkling. Her smile widens until the flesh of her lips is tight and uncomfortable. “She is a wonderful girl, and I think she’ll love to fill us in on everything that’s going on.”

Pitch’s lips move, but I don’t hear what he says. He doesn’t repeat it, and I don’t ask him to because I can’t turn away from the train wreck that has just unfolded before us.

“What a great story to hear that your daughter has been reunited with her father,” Janice says as she clasps her hands in front of her. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”

“You’re so very welcome,” Faustina replies. “It was such a great opportunity to be here, and your studio is so quaint.”

Pitch mutes the television as the interview wraps up. The three of us sit here in the silence, each contemplating what we just heard. Despite my promise to myself to try to stay calm, I’m anything but. I clench and unclench my fists as I try to keep myself from exploding. I cannot believe this woman, and the way she so carelessly throws lies around. Elm is right—she is the first priority. She comes before everyone else. Before Caecila, and especially before Pitch. This interview wasn’t made to share her story—she just wanted to be the first person to say something so that people would take it for the truth, and anything that follows will be an attempt to dethrone her. If Pitch wanted to say something contradictory, it would be his responsibility to come up with evidence to prove her wrong; if he failed, then what Faustina said would reign supreme.

“She always said I was a fussy baby,” Caecilia whispers, her eyes still on the screen. The lights flicker and illuminate her face in a dance of color. “She said that I never did what I was supposed to do, and I always cried and nobody could make me shut up and I always drove her insane.”

What an evil woman.

She tells the girl that she was a fussy baby, and then boasts to the nation how calm and wonderful of an infant she was.

She tells the girl that she’s ugly, and then brags to all of Panem what a beautiful kid she is.

“Caecilia, I know that you love your mother, and I never want to say anything to make you think I’m interfering with that,” Pitch says to her. “But sometimes the things she says are confusing, and it’s hard to know what is the truth and what is a lie. I’m . . . not happy she went to the press to discuss this. You shouldn’t be put in a position like this, and I do not want you interviewed.”

“Will Caligula be mean to me?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. She watches him, her eyes pleading for him to tell her that everything will be okay. She knows that Pitch doesn’t like interviews and that Caligula’s questions were completely inappropriate, and she must fear that he will be equally cruel to her, too.

“I don’t think so,” he answers. “I think he asked us tough questions because we’re adults. I doubt he’d do the same to you—if he’s even the one interviewing. It could be Janice instead. But sometimes, regardless of who the interviewer is, they ask some very personal questions, and sometimes it’s hard to tell them that you don’t want to answer them when you’re being interviewed. They don’t always mean to be invasive.”

“I can call Mom and tell her that I don’t want to be interviewed, so the next time somebody asks, she can tell them no,” Caecilia suggests.

I fiddle with a couple of building blocks, locking them together and prying them apart. I wonder what Faustina would say if Caecilia refused to be interviewed. Would she have sympathy for her daughter, or would she make her get before the camera anyway?

“At this point, we need to let the lawyers discuss these things,” he tells her.

“But I could convince her!” Caeclia pleads.

“Caecilia, no one can convince her to do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Pitch says. “If she wants you to be interviewed, she will do what she can to make sure it happens. And I will do everything in my power to make sure it _doesn’t_ happen.”

The girl nods. It doesn’t convince her that things will be okay, but Pitch is starting to figure out that he can’t protect her from everything, no matter how hard he wants to. If Faustina were a more reasonable person and detailed conversations with the lawyers were not required, he’d be more successful to keep her sheltered from what’s going on in the world. But as it stands, she can’t get that when her mother is going to the press directly to spread lies before anyone else can speak the truth.

I reach over and hand her a few blocks, and Pitch takes the lead and coaxes her back to building their house. As they get situated, I fetch the other two from the library and thank them for hanging out for a few minutes. The rest of the evening moves forward slowly, the minutes ticking by and people saying very little. When it is finally time to go to bed, the kids don’t protest much and dump the unused blocks into the bin they came in before saying goodnight and heading to their rooms. But as they walk down the hallway, I hear Pliny whisper to Caecilia, “What did we miss?” and a few hushed words exchanged between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L E G O S


	88. Chapter 88

Pitch informs me the next morning that he has to take Caecilia to a psychiatrist per the lawyer’s recommendations. He asks me to keep Pliny and Neptune occupied, so I tell him it’s not a problem.

“We’ll just go to the bookstore,” I tell him casually as I tie up the laces on my boots.

He pauses as he adjusts his watch and looks over at me. “You’ve been going to the bookstore rather frequently for someone who hasn’t been reading much,” he comments with suspicion.

I shrug. “I just like books.”

“Quintus’ bookstore?” he asks.

“He has a good selection,” I say carefully. Not because I want to keep the truth from Pitch but, again, I don’t ever know who may be listening into our conversations. Pitch once told me that it’s unlikely that the room is bugged when I voiced my concerns, but I don’t dare chance it. Not when we’re talking about things that are far more serious than just our hatred for the Hunger Games.

He studies me as he tries to figure out why the hell I keep going back to that creep’s store. But I need to ask Quintus some questions—I need to know a bit about the truth, even if I can’t know it all. Pitch won’t understand this because I haven’t quite been keeping him updated about my visits with Quintus, and I certainly didn’t tell him about the last one. And if my suspicions are correct, then saying anything where there’s any chance of being overheard could be disastrous.

I finish tying my other shoe and stand up. I might’ve left Pitch in the dark about a few things, but he’s no idiot. “Be careful,” he warns.

“I think I can survive a bookstore,” I say, but I nod to let him know that I got his message. We leave it at that, and I go off to round up Pliny and Neptune while Pitch tells Caecilia that they have an errand to run. When they find out that I’m heading to the bookstore, Pliny and Neptune groan and Caecilia asks if she can come.

“No, you need to come with me today,” Pitch says.

“I’ll take her place,” Neptune offers.

I tap the little girl on the head to get her attention before motioning towards the door. “Today’s your day for books,” I tell her.

Quintus lets me wander the shelves for twenty minutes before he walks over and invites me to discuss the latest book. I ask the kids to hang out in the children’s area and to find a book each for themselves and one for Caecilia. They eye Quintus with suspicion and I reassure him that we’re in the same book club, which satisfies them enough that when I tell them to find something that Caecilia will like, they head off without further issue.

“Have you finished the book?” he asks as we wander through the shelves.

“Not quite,” I say. “But I’m near the end. Reading has been a little slow with everything else going on.”

We step into the VIP area. Quintus leads us to a table and once again, the avox waits on us. This time he doesn’t bother with asking us what we’d like and brings the tea directly over to us and sets it on the table. Quintus motions for him to lock the door, and as soon as the avox has followed his order and disappeared into the back, he turns to me.

“What brings you into the bookstore today?” he asks casually as he stirs sugar into his tea. The clicking of the spoon on the cup jars me from my thoughts.

“I wanted to see if Pliny and Neptune have the same affection for books as Caecilia,” I say as I lift my mug. Before I take a sip, I add, “They don’t.”

“Perhaps we’ll make readers out of them yet,” Quintus replies. He lifts the spoon from the mug, flicks it to encourage the last drops of tea to fall, and then sets it onto the saucer. “You know I always find you in the same section of the bookstore? It’s like you’re _waiting_ for me to find you.”

“It’s inevitable that you do, so I might as well get it over with.”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose so,” he says, and then he takes a sip. The mug clinks against the table as he sets it down. “Tell me, did you burn that dress?”

“It’s on my to-do list. I have to figure out how to get around my apartment complex’s fire regulations,” I answer. It’s irritating that I’m so damned see-through that he knows why I come to his store, but it’s a relief to have the topic open, and at least I don’t have to figure out how to approach the subject. “Too bad Martha never got to see it.”

“Yes, too bad indeed,” he answers. “As I told you, she was a friend of mine, and someone with whom I had regular—though perhaps not frequent—correspondence.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, still not certain what, exactly, his relationship to this woman was. And at this point, I don’t want to accidentally offend him. He might not have liked her, but he also might not have wanted to see her dead.

“No you’re not,” he says. His eyes don’t leave me as he continues. “And rightfully so. Her death meant that you escaped a nasty fate. You wouldn’t have died, of course, but your future wouldn’t have been pleasant.”

“What do you know about her death?” I dare to ask.

“What do you?” he responds.

“That one of her own avoxes used her guillotine against her,” I answer.

“Hmm, yes, that is the story,” he says.

“Is it not true?” I ask.

“Martha had many enemies in the Capitol, and I’m sure that there are plenty of people who, like you, will not be mourning her loss,” he answers. “She was a well-respected woman, but her bloodlust was no secret. It’s something that many are willing to overlook from somebody who designs the arenas—and designs them well—but here comes a point where it becomes problematic. She had a way of making people uncomfortable, but she was good at what she did and she served her purpose, so people tolerated it. However, when she turns the threats away from victors and bunnies and towards little Capitol girls . . . now that’s not something that can be tolerated.”

_Caecilia._

I sit up straight and look at Quintus, mug abandoned in my hands. I feel its warmth flowing into my fingers, but only just barely. So she did die because of me. Because I came to Quintus and told him what had happened the day we had tea.

He smiles at me. “Nobody cares much what people like her do to victors as long as the victors are not too damaged in the process; it’s all part of the way things work. But they do care when they perceive that their own positions are threatened. Martha was a direct threat to many people. She knew how critical she was to keeping the Hunger Games running, and she was very willing to remind others of this fact. Some of her comments were perceived to be very threatening.”

Then it wasn’t just me. What happened that afternoon was just an excuse to take out somebody who was a known threat to others. I remember the tea in my hands and lift the cup to my lips as a distraction, but the warmth of the liquid is welcomed.

“The avox who killed her. . . .” I start.

“. . . . Just pleaded guilty,” Quintus finishes. “Announced on the news today.”

“What will happen to him?”

“Oh, they’ll give him a trial, but he’ll likely be executed,” Quintus says offhandedly. “Not much you can do to punish an avox who’s committed a crime like that.”

No, of course not. Being an avox is punishment to begin with, so there’s not a whole lot they could do about it. But at this point, I know that the avox is merely a scapegoat who will die so that whoever actually killed her can go back to his or her comfortable house and live a comfortable life free from this political threat. And I can’t really complain, either, because if nobody had killed her, then I’d still be in her service. Still, it’s hard not to feel bad for the avox.

“Did the avox sedate her first?” I ask, thinking about the bunnies that she refused to sedate because it made the meat taste bad.

“They found a bit of paralytic drug in her system. It doesn’t cause sedation, but it does keep the muscles from moving,” he answers. He pauses. “You might want to keep that bit to yourself. . . . The toxicology report hasn’t been released yet.”

Drugged enough that she couldn’t move, but kept conscious so she knew what was happening the entire time.

I swallow hard and clutch the mug close to me. “And you know this because. . . . ?”

“I hope you’re not accusing me of anything,” he says with surprise. “I was with you at the party the whole time.” He raises an eyebrow at me for the briefest of seconds before he reaches over and picks up his mug again. I watch as he adds a touch of cream and stirs the tea.

 _He killed Martha,_ I realize with a start. My heart thumps and I stare down into the steam rising up from the mug against my chest.

He didn’t have somebody else do it, and he didn’t persuade the avox. It was his hand that released the blade of the guillotine. I don’t know how he did it—I don’t _want_ to know how, I realize—but I am one hundred percent certain that Quintus offed Martha.

_For me?_

If he really did kill her for me—the timing was perfect, after all—that is something I will never be able to pay back.

“You were at the party,” I confirm after a small hesitation. “You introduced me to a lot of people.”

That’s why he was being so weird. Why he didn’t care if we had a “conversation” or not. He wanted to be seen by as many people as possible so that he couldn’t be linked to the scene of the crime. And now some avox would be dying in his place. . . .

“I’m surprised the avox confessed, though,” I say. Then I add, “I would have thought he would have known that he’d be executed.”

Quintus shrugs. “And yet he freed his fellow avoxes from a woman who most likely treated them very badly,” he responds. “I’m sure they appreciate his sacrifice.”

“Of course,” I answer. _As do I._

But despite understanding that Quintus has saved me from months or years of misery, I still don’t understand why he did it. I am only a victor, and as he said, people don’t give a shit about us as long as we hold ourselves together for the cameras. Nobody stepped in to help Pitch, so why am I any different? I can no longer believe that Quintus’ affection for me is a driving force. Nobody would risk their lives to kill a powerful person in order to save me no matter how much they liked me.

“It almost seems like the avox . . . did this for me,” I try. I stare down at the mug in my hands as I talk, unable to look at Quintus. I don’t know why; it’s not like he can’t see through me already.

“Possibly,” the man says. “It could be that he was very fond of you, or maybe his years of working with Martha had revealed that she was not—how shall I say it—a productive member of society.”

“I thought that you said she was well respected,” I say, now looking up at him. He sits back in his chair and watches me with amusement.

“And she was. But if your behavior is more detrimental than it is beneficial to society as a whole, then it makes you a major risk,” he says. “And arena designers, no matter how valuable, can always be replaced.”

Everybody can be replaced.

(Except for victors.)

I clear my throat and try to refocus myself.

“Quintus. . . . What do you do for a living?” I ask.

“I own a bookstore,” he says, gesturing vaguely around at the books that line the walls of the VIP suite.

“You said it was a hobby,” I remind him.

“Speaking of, have I sent you the third book in the trilogy yet?” he asks, boldly ignoring my questions. When I don’t answer, he says, “You know, Juniper, sometimes things are best left alone.”

“Alright,” I say. “Yes, I did receive the book.”

“Good,” he answers. “Now, how is the wedding planning coming along?”

I bristle. Not another damned discussion about the wedding. He shakes his head at my reaction to his simple question.

“I do hope that you’re following your escort’s guidance and making sure not to cause a stir,” he says.

“I’m going along with whatever they schedule me,” I tell him. He looks at me like he’s waiting for more, so I add somewhat reluctantly, “And I’m happy to do so.”

“There’s a good girl,” he says. “Martha may no longer be an issue for you, but I can guarantee that there are others who are more than eager to take her place. Oh, they might not request your personal companionship, but they do want to make sure that everything about the Hunger Games flows smoothly, both inside and outside of the arena.”

“I understand,” I say.

“Possibly,” he answers. “I think you understand that you have to obey, though the greater picture of things remains elusive. As it should. You are not in a position to know more than what you need to know because anything else could be very dangerous to a victor.”

“Why? Are they afraid I might rebel?” I ask. I shut my mouth before I can say anymore. No need to bring up a conversation that never happened and potentially get other people in trouble. I tighten my grip on my mug before realizing that I might actually break it if I am not careful and slightly loosen my fingers.

He laughs. “You don’t even need to get that far,” he says. “Once you start understanding how things work, you start realizing that there are flaws in the system. If you try to fix those flaws—and I’m not talking about revolution but merely addressing inefficiencies—things start to change. And the people in power have worked far too hard to get to where they are to have any sort of change interfere with their positions.”

“What is your role in all of this?”

“The less you know, the safer you are,” he tells me. “Oh, but Juniper? Your dinner tonight. . . . I suggest you keep in mind that the people with whom you dine may be some of the most important people you ever meet.”


	89. Chapter 89

We buy the kids a soccer ball and take them to the park, but when Pitch and I try to sit down under a tree and relax, then beg us to join them. I had hoped to talk with Pitch about my conversation with Quintus today, but when the kids start needling us, it looks like he’s going to give in.

“C’mon, please,” Neptune says. “It won’t be fun with only three people!”

Despite my protests, the three of them give us pleading looks and we finally give in. I know little about soccer—I’ve played in PE class, but I’ve never really had an interest in it outside of that—but it doesn’t seem to matter. Pliny sets things up so that one person is in the goal box and the other four people are on teams of two. Both teams must score on the same goal, and whoever reaches five points first wins. There’s more to it than that, and he has to keep stopping us to tell us that we’ve broken some rule or another.

After about half an hour, I pause to catch my breath. Pitch is in the goal box now, and I wander over to him despite Neptune’s protests that I’m not “carrying my weight” in our team.

“Everything okay?” Pitch asks.

“Yes,” I say breathlessly. “I just don’t think I’ve had this much exercise since I was in the arena. But . . . I had wanted to talk with you. About tonight.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

I scan out and see that Neptune is trying to get the ball from Pliny. She’s very pushy and uses her hands to smack at him, but he only laughs at her and passes the ball to Caecilia.

“There are going to be a lot of important people there,” I say. I don’t bother telling him where I heard the information; I’m sure he can figure that part out. He studies me for a second and is about to say something, but Pliny and Caecilia swoop in and easily score a goal in his moment of distraction. Neptune lets out a wail.

“You let them score!” she cries.

“Sorry,” I tell her. “I needed a second.”

Perhaps in the middle of a soccer game is not the best time to bring this up. Neptune looks at me with large, watery eyes like I have greatly offended her in every way possible, and I step away from the goal post. But as I leave Pitch and trot back towards my downcast teammate, I realize that we’re being watched. And not a secretive government-is-always-spying-on-you-to-make-sure-you-don’t-mess-up sort of way. As in, there are people standing at the side of the field outright _staring_ at us. They don’t even pretend to be discrete about it. When Neptune passes me the ball, I direct my anger into my kick and send it sailing past the goal and off into the park.

“You have to go get it,” Pliny tells me as he pauses to catch his breath.

“Sure,” I acknowledge, and I begin to jog towards the goal. When I reach Pitch, I say under my breath, “People are watching,” and then I continue on towards the soccer ball. I’m slow to dribble it in, and the kids have gotten impatient. Neptune sits on the grass plucking clovers out of the lawn. Pliny and Caecilia are talking with Pitch.

As I approach them, I see that even more people had gathered, and one woman dares to call out, “Your children are beautiful!”

The five of us look up at her. None of us react. How do you handle a situation such as this? I slow down and stop near Pitch, Pliny, and Caecilia.

“We’re just going to keep playing for a few minutes more,” Pitch says. He pauses and fiddles with his phone. “I’m setting a timer to go off in five minutes—we’ll call it good at that point.”

He doesn’t want the people watching to think that we’re leaving because of them. He wants it to seem like it’s our pre-determined time to leave. Although he doesn’t say that this interaction unnerves him, it’s very clear that it does. He sticks the phone back in his pocket and I dribble the ball out onto the field. Pliny must be unnerved, too, because he doesn’t even tell me that I shouldn’t have possession of the ball right now because I was the one who kicked it out of bounds. We continue playing, but with the exception of Neptune, none of us have quite the same energy as we did before.

The timer goes off after a long five minutes, and Pitch announces to us, “Okay, guys, time to get back.”

Neptune sighs and flops on the ground. I lean down and hoist her up by her upper arms, and she plants her feet on the grass. She gives me a sad look but starts walking towards the others. To my relief, some of the people have scattered. They enjoyed watching us, but now that the show’s over, they have decided to make themselves scarce so it’s not completely obvious how creepy they were being. Others, however, remain behind. Including the lady who called out to us a few minutes ago.

She walks over to us now that it’s clear out game is over. Her long sequined skirts sweep the top of the grass.

“I do think your family is perfect,” she tells Pitch. Aside from the from the skirt, she wears athletic shoes and a snugly-fit athletic sweatshirt like she is out here to exercise, but with thick makeup that will probably sweat right off the moment she does anything vaguely strenuous. “Do you think I can have a photograph?”

“Thank you for asking, but at this time, I’d like them to have privacy,” he says, repeating the words that he told the person at the autograph event yesterday.

“Certainly you can’t expect them to come out here with you _and_ have their privacy remain intact,” the woman replies.

Pitch clenches his jaw. “I understand that people will see them here with me, but I hope that the fact that I have their best interests in mind will be respected,” he answers.

“To deny that you’re their father is in their best interest?” the woman asks, aghast.

“I’m not denying that I’m their father,” Pitch says evenly. “I only ask that their personal lives and what they do on their free time remain as normal as possible.

“But certainly they’re proud of who they are and want to share it with Panem,” the woman presses. I start to open my mouth, but Pitch takes my hand before I can get any words out. The woman continues, “Why, even the girl’s mother is in favor of allowing her daughter to experience the life of a victor’s child. And I’m only asking for a photograph, not to share her personal information.”

“Dad, we’re going to be late,” Pliny says suddenly.

“Yes, of course,” Pitch says. He nods to the lady and says, “Good day.” Pliny and Caecilia begin walking, and I grab Neptune’s hand to keep her with us before she can get snatched away by these strangers. The five of us keep moving, even when we reach the sidewalk, so that we are out of the people’s line of sight and won’t be pursued as we wait for out cab. It’s only when I’m in the backseat of the taxi that I realize we forgot the soccer ball at the park.

I don’t get to ask Pitch how the visit with the psychiatrist went because Daphne, Tasha, and Leander come over early to start getting us ready for tonight’s dinner. Esther and Maximus stop by shortly thereafter to pick up the kids for the night; they let us know that since we’ll probably be back late, they’ll plan to keep them overnight. Tasha whisks me away to the library which she’s turned into her official workstation, and I barely have time to give Esther a “thank you.”

Tasha strips me down and dresses me in a nice, but formal, dress whose bodice is just a hair too tight. When I ask her to loosen it or I won’t be able to eat at all, she reminds me that it’s more important to look presentable than it is to eat the food they provide me. Then she fastens the back of the dress and smooths out the skirt. Tonight I don’t get to wear my boots, but at least she knows me well enough to understand that heels won’t work out, so she has given me flats that match my dress. She carefully slips them on and fastens the buckles as I stand there. Then she bids me to sit down in a chair and drapes fabric across me as she begins to work on my hair and makeup.

As far as stylists go, she’s not terrible. Most of her work is flattering, but every now and again she comes up with some more creative pieces that make me question her sanity. Tonight, however, she’s keeping things steady. As expected, my makeup is heavier than I normally wear it, but I suppose it’ll be dark enough wherever we go that it won’t look bad. She pulls my hair back off my shoulders and fastens it back in a bun. My neck feels vulnerable without my hair to cover it, but she just smiles at my protests.

“Juniper, you are very beautiful, and you should take advantage of your beauty by trying new things,” she tells me as she clips the bun into place. She pauses to pull earrings out of a small box, and she slips the posts into my ear lobes. Light catches the dangling part of the earrings, and they’re quite beautiful. If only they didn’t feel as though they weighed my ears down. “Pitch will love you no matter what you’re wearing, but he will be thrilled to see you in a new light.”

“Yeah, okay,” I mutter. I’m not sure it matters too much to Pitch what I wear.

Once I’m ready and everything about me is in place, she releases me to go back to the sitting room to meet up with Daphne. Pitch is already there, and he smiles when I flop down onto the couch.

“You look nice,” he says.

“Thanks. You too,” I tell him. “Your beard is very . . . beard-like.”

Leander has done something to it to make it look a little fuller than normal. Then he trimmed it down and shaped it a bit. Maybe in a few days, Pitch will look more lumberjack-esque, but in the meantime, it flatters him.

“Alright, let’s go over some stuff about tonight,” Daphne says. She lowers herself into an armchair and pulls out her tablet. After a moment of scrolling through the information, she looks up to us. “Dinner tonight is at the Classical Restaurant. It is a seven-course meal. You will be there with about two dozen people who you may or may not have met while you’ve been in the Capitol. All of these names are . . . well, Clarus Rhovanion is a gamemaker. Francisca Verissimus is also a gamemaker. Ah, and then there’s Patricius Snell who is one of the leading geologists for the arena—not a terrible individual, but quite influential regardless. . . .”

Quintus wasn’t joking when he warned me about this meal. I try to draw in a breath, but discover that I can only do it very slowly otherwise the dress only shrinks down against my ribs. Daphne lists off a couple of other dangerous people, but it’s very clear that they provided us a dinner whose entire purpose is to make us uncomfortable.

“Daphne, what insight can you provide about conversations tonight?” Pitch asks. “Are they looking for anything in particular?”

She sets the tablet on her lap. “They would like to hear your appreciation for the opportunity to be married in the Capitol,” she tells us. “Be clear how much you two love each other, but also tie in the fact that you met because you were both victors, and without that opportunity, you never would have found each other. If they mention your children, I advise that you emphasize that their presence only strengthens the bond between you and the Hunger Games.”

They want us to _grovel_ before them and worship the ground they stand on. If I can’t lie, then how the hell am I supposed to pull this off?

“It will be okay,” Pitch reassures me as he takes my hand. Then he says to Daphne, “Should we expect any surprises?”

“If there are any, I’m not aware of them,” she answers. “I will be in the café next door, so if there are any issues, please let me know.”

“Thank you,” he says.

There’s something ominous about the fact that Daphne will be lingering around the area “just in case” she is needed. She turns back to her tablet to scan through a few more things, and I take the opportunity to really look her over. Right now, she’s not in typical escort gear. Instead she wears a pair of slacks and a light sweater. It seems so natural on her that trying to recall what she looked like in the silver suit she wore at the reaping is next to impossible. She looks far more capable sitting here in my sitting room with a tablet in hand than wearing some fashionable costume as she led the tributes about. And looks aside, she’s obviously keen enough to figure out how to handle the wedding planning, get us to the right place at the right time, and warn us about the people with whom we’ll be interacting. It disgusts me that she’s wasted in something as meaningless as the Hunger Games, though I can’t deny that her help here is greatly appreciated.

“We should get going,” she says as she tucks the tablet away and stands up. She gives us a reassuring smile, but it’s definitely forced and not at all reassuring.


	90. Chapter 90

Dinner takes place in a small restaurant that has been closed to the public specifically for this occasion. It’s a quiet, dark place where warm lighting and a live pianist create a formal atmosphere. I suppose it’s meant to come across as calming, but it’s anything but.

Pitch has me take his arm and I try my damnedest not to cling to him. I hold my head up and breathe evenly while forcing myself to relax my expression. I don’t suppose it matters if I don’t come across as entirely comfortable as long as I don’t appear to be ungrateful. Because tonight is about making sure I appear appreciative to the generous people of the Capitol who have made this joyous wedding possible—both in terms of hosting the event but also for bringing Pitch and I together through the glorious Hunger Games. People are mingling around in the front room enjoying appetizers and drinking, but once they notice that Pitch and I have arrived, a cheer goes out through the crowd. Despite their enthusiasm, it does nothing to indicate support or happiness. It’s only a call to alert everyone around them that the designated victims have arrived.

Then we are introduced to a wide variety of characters:

Clarus Rhovanion, a gamemaker in his third year of Hunger Games. He proudly tells me that I was his first victor. Not that I was victorious in the first year that he was organizing the Hunger Games—no, I was _his_ first victor. I thank him for an interesting arena. “Juniper,” he says, “it was my pleasure to know that you appreciated it so much that you later requested a garden. Most victors stay as far away from their arenas as they can.” I don’t like the way he says it, but I just smile at him as he wanders away.

Francisca Verissimus, a gamemaker who has been around for a few decades and, I’m told, is in line to be head gamemaker in the near future. She is an older woman, a few years away from being the sweet little granny you give up your bus seat to or help across the road. But knowing that she has orchestrated the deaths of hundreds of kids makes me wonder how many other cute old people have a sadistic pasts.

Patricius Snell, a scientist who explains that he worked on many Hunger Games throughout the years until he retired. He, however, came out of retirement to assist part-time. He babbles about something technical that goes well above my head before he expresses his excitement about our marriage. I don’t know who the hell he is beyond that, or why he was invited.

Jim Bob, Billy Bob, and Richard Robert, three brothers who are in the arena engineering department. They appear identical except for their height difference. Their facial features, outfits, makeup—everything is exactly the same. The tallest, Jim Bob, proudly explains that the 125th Hunger Games was a great challenge for them, but they were so thrilled that it had come together the way it had, especially since the three of them were so new to the Hunger Games at the time.

Petronilla, Pitch’s old escort from many years prior, now retired. She praises Pitch for what a wonderful tribute and young victor he was, and then she tells us how happy she is for us and that she knows that we will live a long and happy life together. She kisses us each on the cheek and tears up as she grasps Pitch’s face in her hands and looks him over. “Oh, how happy I am for you!” she says before releasing him and dabbing her eyes daintily with her finger as she avoids smudging her makeup.

Maurus Turibius, another gamemaker, this one in his first year. “Your Hunger Games taught me so much while I was training for this position, Juniper,” he tells me as he takes both my hands in his. His cold skin sucks the warmth from my hands. “Such a tenacious tribute. A fine victor. And a beautiful young woman.”

Finally we’re told that it’s time to sit down before we have a chance to meet the rest, and Pitch and I are shown to seats at a long, round table. He pulls out my chair for me and I take my seat, then he sits down in his own. I look over the place setting that has a dozen different utensils, and it occurs to me with a sudden burst of panic that maybe I should have had lessons in formal table manners before coming to this event. Although I have been in fancy places before, I have never done so when surrounded by people who were watching my every move for any little misstep. Something to tell them that I am a threat. Pitch takes my hand under the table, and I allow myself to give him a small smile of thanks.

We’re served soup. I don’t know what it is, but I also know that it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not. And it also doesn’t matter if I can eat it while wearing this confining dress as long as I pretend that I can. Before I pick up my spoon, I follow the lead of the others around the table to make sure I grab the right utensil. Everybody around me chatters, and sometimes they ask me questions about the wedding planning, or about how excited I am, or those sorts of things. I’ve been asked these questions enough times now that I can answer them a little more gracefully than I did at the interviews. And now that I actually have information—what colors my flowers are (even if I don’t know the type), what the cake looks like, what decorations there will be, etc.—I don’t sound nearly half as dumb as I did before. I can’t quite figure out how to work in my “appreciation” for a Capitol wedding, though; that sort of false flattery doesn’t quite roll off my tongue, and I fear that it’ll come across as forced. That would be even worse than saying nothing at all.

When the soup is cleared away, they place an appetizer on the table. I don’t know what people were eating before when we were mingling around if this is the official appetizer, but I don’t question why there are two courses by the same name. Instead I take a polite amount and nibble on it.

“So you’re going to District 4 for you honeymoon?” the woman next to me, Therasia, asks me. She has already introduced herself as someone working in advertising and promotion for the Hunger Games. Pitch is engaged in conversation with the people next to him, so I’m on my own with this one.

“Yes,” I tell her. I’m not a good conversationalist and I know it, but for the life of me, I can’t really figure out how to answer yes/no questions with more than a word or two. Not really great for discussions.

Fortunately, Therasia is better at this than I am. “Oh, that’s quite wonderful,” she says. “I’ve been there many times, and I think you’ll like it very much. But here’s the truth: if you stay directly on the resort property, you’ll go out of your minds with boredom. So feel free to wander a bit—don’t be shy.”

“Thank you,” I say. I force myself to be more active in this conversation and continue, “What is outside of the resort?”

“There’s a quaint little town nearby,” she tells me as she pats my hand. Her fingers remain on my wrist as she talks. “You aren’t allowed to wander everywhere in District 4, but they do so love when the tourists visit the areas near the resort. They love the money tourism brings in, of course, and they have so much culture to share with people.”

Wow, I bet they do.

“What do you recommend doing in the town?” I ask. I feel like I sound like I’m reading off of notecards, just like I did during my victory tour.

“Anything you try will be wonderful,” she says. “You’ll love it very much, I’m sure.” Her nails trace along my wrist. If I had any arm hair (which I don’t thanks to the beauty center), I’m sure that every single hair would be standing at end.

“I hope so. It sounds really nice,” I tell her. “We are very appreciative that we get to go there.”

Okay, that wasn’t so bad. It might not have been the most natural phrase to come from my mouth, but at least it didn’t sound forced.

“As you should be,” she says. Her nails press a little harder against my skin. “You see, Juniper, you and Pitch are very special. Everybody loves you two, and rightly so. It would be very nice to see you enjoying yourselves on your honeymoon.”

I falter. She’s warning me—threatening me. Her nails drag across my wrist now, and she lets them linger for a moment before she pulls them away and turns back to her food. Visiting the nearby town and doing things outside of the resort aren’t optional. I can only assume that they want us to show all of Panem how happy we are. They don’t want us hiding away inside the resort where the public can’t see us.

I look down at my plate and tell myself that there are only a few more courses to go, and then dinner will be over. I can get through this. And what little I’ve eaten so far isn’t half bad.

The servers bring out a salad for each of us and set it in front of us. I manage to eat a few bites, but the dark green and purple lettuce is dry with only the vaguest hint of sauce. Reminds me too much of eating heads of lettuce in the arena. To my relief, not every person clears his or her plate with each course, so I know that I’m not being entirely rude (at least no more than anyone else) by not finishing what they give me. It’s a great waste, but so is everything else they do in the Capitol.

We make more idle talk, and then the salads are swapped out for a plate with lamb and rosemary potatoes. It’s alright. Again, I can’t eat much, and it’s not good enough that I want to risk it. Whenever I finish a plate, I tuck my hands in my lap and wait until Pitch’s hand is free so that I can grasp it under the table. He squeezes my fingers gently.

“You two are quite remarkable,” says Francisca, the gamemaker. She sits across from us where she daintily eats her meal, but now she puts down her fork and hones in on us. “Two victors falling in love. Definitely remarkable. Do you think it will interfere with your duties as mentors? This is such a unique situation.”

“We don’t suspect there will be an issue,” Pitch says. “It’s because of mentoring that we’re together, and I think we’ve learned enough last year to make sure that things go smoothly in future years.”

Francisca studies him carefully. Her eyes linger on his face too long, but Pitch keeps eye contact. At last she says, “I am happy to hear that. You know, I am sure, that your priority is to continue your duties to your tributes. If anything should indicate that these priorities are not in the right place, you might want to reconsider your relationship.”

I tighten my grip on Pitch’s fingers. That is definitely a threat. They’re okay with Pitch and me marrying, but they will also take it away from us if they ever feel like it.

“Yes,” Pitch says. Right now, even he doesn’t trust himself to say more. It is only when Francisca releases him from the conversation by turning back to her plate that Pitch’s seems to realize how tightly I’m gripping his hand. He runs his thumb against my hand, and slowly I relax my grasp, if only a little.

Everything we do is theirs.

Our lives. Our relationships. Our bodies. Nothing we can do will ever be free from them, and they will do everything in their power to make sure that we know just how much they own us. Now I can only wonder if there’s actually a point in getting married if they could just as easily tear us apart. I have been so foolish to think that this decision we’ve made will somehow give us the smallest taste of freedom, like it’s a great accomplishment to have come this far. But it’s not. It’s just another part of us that will be controlled by the people in power. My obsession blinded me, and this gamemaker’s words, predictable though they are, have taken me completely off guard.

They don’t just hold our lives and the lives of our family and friend over our heads. They hold everything we are within their hands, and they will squeeze the life out of us if it pleases them.

The plates are cleared away, and in return we are given small fruit tarts with a variety of berries on top.

“On the topic of relationships,” says Patricius, the scientist. “It’s quite fortunate that you reconnected with your children.”

“Yes, I wish I had done so sooner,” Pitch tells him.

The man continues, “Are they going to be going with you back to District 7 or staying in the Capitol?”

“That hasn’t been decided yet,” Pitch says. “We are following the guidance of the lawyers at this point in order to ensure that we do what’s best for the kids.”

“As you should,” Patricius says. “Francisca, what is the protocol for children from the Capitol going to the districts?”

“Typically Capitol citizens, children or otherwise, are required to live in the Capitol, though visits can be arranged outside, should the need arise,” the woman says. “However, if a child is going to be taking up residence in a district, it does bring up questions for whether the child is still a citizen of the Capitol. It may be more appropriate to declare residency in the district in which the child now resides.”

In other words, if Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune come live with us, they will be District 7 citizens.

Pitch calmly lowers his fork, but his hand drops below the table and finds mine. Because if his children are District 7 citizens. . . .

“But wouldn’t switching citizenship to a district mean that they are eligible for the Hunger Games?” Patricius asks her. Something about the way he says it makes me think that this is definitely not a casual question that he happened to stroll across in conversation. No, this is scripted. I swallow several times to keep the bile in my throat from rising.

“As all children between the ages of twelve and eighteen are, yes,” the woman answers as her fork cuts into her pastry. “Though I don’t think that will be a problem for Pitch and Juniper. After all, they, of all people, understand the importance of the Hunger Games and the privilege of holding the title of victor.” Her eyes flick up away from her pastry and directly at Pitch.

She wants to hear Pitch say that he’s okay with his children going to the arena. If he denies it, he’ll be putting himself into an absolutely dangerous position that he cannot afford to be in. The bile in my throat vanishes, replaced by nothing but pure anger. I press the palm of my free hand against the side of the chair and try to calm myself down enough that I can continue the conversation without freaking out on everyone. The searing pain within me at the thought of what this woman is putting Pitch through right now is enough that it almost overwhelms my attempts to remain in control of myself.

“It wouldn’t be fair to withhold their names from the reaping,” Pitch agrees.

Sometimes the children of victors end up in the Hunger Games. Despite the fact that there are literally tens of thousands of children to choose from, that one name that is drawn from the reaping bowl happens to belong to the child of a victor sitting up on the stage. There have been very few “legacy victors” in Hunger Games history.

“Of course, if they stay with their mothers, even part time, they don’t lose their Capitol citizenship, right?” Patricius asks the older woman.

“That is correct. Same if Pitch takes up residency in the Capitol,” she answers. “Now, if they have their own children. . . . Juniper, do you plan on having kids?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’ve never planned on having kids. Ever. But I don’t know how to answer this woman who clearly fishes for answers and is ready to punish us if we give her the wrong reply. After she made Pitch say that he’d be willing to subject his kids to the Hunger Games, I know that I cannot tell the truth and say that I do not want children because it would seem that I fear that they would be reaped. That’s not the case at all; I never feared my kids going to the arena because I never wanted kids to begin with.

“I haven’t really thought about kids yet,” I answer.

A couple people at the table chuckle, and I realize that they think that my hesitation might be because I genuinely haven’t given the question much thought, not because I was paralyzed by a sudden and intense fear.

“It will be a bit of time before we start thinking about children,” Pitch says. “We don’t want to rush things. Juniper needs to finish her studies, and we want to get a few Hunger Games under our belt.”

“Speaking of studies, have you signed up for classes next semester?” asks Clarus, the one gamemaker who is in his third year.

“Not yet,” I answer. “I was waiting until the Hunger Games and the wedding were over.” Or I had just outright forgotten to sign up. I should probably do that.

The servers come and clear our plates again. Now they set out mugs of steaming coffee in front of each person. Additionally, they place little plates of chocolates—milk, dark, white—on the table. This new course distracts everyone as they add creamer to their coffees or choose their chocolates, but I feel the gamemaker’s eyes lingering on me for a few long moments. To take my mind off it, I lift up the mug of coffee in front of me and take a sip.

“How do you plan on continuing your education once you’re married?” asks the gamemaker named Maurus.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I tell him. Hasn’t he watched the interviews? This is no new information. But I know that this “interview” they’re giving me now is far more important than any interview I’ve ever sat through with Caligula or anyone else. I’m not expected to smile for the cameras and entertain people. No, these men and women are dissecting me to see what I’m really made of. “They may let me take classes at home as long as I keep in touch with them. Otherwise I’ll go back to the dorm.”

“It might be a good idea to sit out a year while you get used to married life,” says Clarus. “It’s quite a change, and I can’t imagine having to be an hour away from my spouse.”

I don’t respond to this because what the hell can I even say? My heart thumps, and I feel the pulse in my jugular. Suspend classes? What the hell? Why?

“It would also free up your schedule to take care of the children,” he adds.

No no no! I don’t want to take care of the children! They’re old enough that they’re self-sufficient, and Pitch can do the rest! I might like them, but I have never wanted kids, and I don’t want them to ruin the one thing I’m doing in life to better myself!

But are _they_ ruining it?

_They’re just a convenient excuse. If the kids weren’t there, they’d find some other “reason” to take away my education._

I swallow back the emotions surging through me and say, “Okay.”

“You are a very wise young woman,” Clarus comments. “I’m glad you know how to prioritize and balance your responsibilities.”

And just like that, I’m out of school.

Why?

Because the Capitol can—and will—control my life. We will get the one thing we wanted, but as a trade-off, they have decided that we will make other sacrifices. Suddenly I regret all the times I skipped class to sit in the library, or the times I couldn’t force myself to finish assignments. All of that learning I lost. . . . And now I’ll never have access to it again.

Pitch’s hand in mine is a reminder that I am not alone.

“It will also give you more time to focus on your new victor talent,” Francisca points out. My eyes widen and I draw in a breath. Although I don’t have any great connection with my current talent, nobody informed me that they were going to make me change.

“Oh, you’re switching talents?” Patricius, the scientist, asks me with genuine surprise. “I always loved your carvings. What are you changing it to?”

I glance at Francisca. What _am_ I changing it to?

“Don’t be shy, Juniper,” she says. Then to Patricius, “She’s decided she wants to play the harp. I say it’s a very good decision and suits her well.”

I’m about to say that I don’t play the harp, but I fortunately think better of it and clamp my lips shut. I listen to Francisca tell Patricius—and everyone who is in earshot now listening into our conversation—that I decided to switch from chainsaw carving to the harp because I thought it better suited my nature. When people tell me how much they look forward to hearing me, I just give them a smile. It’s forced, but I can’t even pretend anymore. Everything about me is barely held together, and expending any additional effort to keep up my “grateful and appreciative” façade will only knock everything down. The conversation changes as people discuss things that are no longer important to me, and I feel myself mentally vanishing from the room. I struggle against the sensation, and when at last I don’t think I can hang on much longer, I realize that the people near me are starting to move and shuffle around.

“C’mon, Juniper,” Pitch says quietly. We stand up, and he puts an arm around me. We linger around longer, and with Pitch supporting me I am able to put the smile back on my face and thank everyone for coming and tell them how happy I am that we’ll be married soon and that the venue is quite wonderful.

At last we’re excused, and Pitch leads me out to the sidewalk where we find a taxi and return to the apartment.

I am grateful that Esther and Maximus have the children because I don’t think I can pretend that everything is okay anymore. As soon as I get to the apartment, I throw my purse down and storm into the bedroom. I reach for the nearest item I find, my arm aching to throw it across the room, but as my hands wrap around the vase, I find myself hesitating.

Pitch is with me then. He takes the vase out of my hand and sets it down. His arms wrap around me and he holds me against him, applying force to keep my anger from rising. I feel his heart beating and I try to turn my attention to that to keep me from losing myself entirely.

“They own us, Pitch,” I whisper once I’m calm enough to speak. “I thought—ugh, I’m so stupid.”

“Shh, you’re not stupid,” he consoles me, his words soft against my ear, his cheek against mine. The beard brushes my skin, but whatever concoction Leander put on it makes it smooth and not scratchy. “But this is our decision, not theirs. They make the other decisions, but this one is ours and ours alone, no matter how much they interfere.”

“Why do they do this? Don’t they know that they own us?” I ask, my voice coming out as a pathetic whimper.

“They’re trying to keep us in line and remind us that even though we’re doing this for ourselves, it’s because they’re letting us,” he answers.

“By taking away my classes and making me play an instrument I have no desire to play?”

“They’re trying to change your image,” he says.

Change my image? Why the hell would they do that? They own me regardless, so why does it matter if I do chainsaw carving or play the harp?

But then, the image isn’t for me. It’s for everyone else. That’s what this is about, right? They need to project things in a manner that will work for them—something that keeps their world aligned. If they see me as a threat, as Quintus says I am, then they don’t want everyone to look up and admire the District 7 girl who selflessly volunteered for a handicapped kid, then took up chainsaw carving and went to school to get educated. It doesn’t matter that they chose chainsaw carving for me, or that my parents were the ones who enrolled me in university. It’s the image that I convey that’s important to them.

“Pitch, let’s go on a date,” I say.

“It’s late,” he says. “We can go another time when—”

“Yes right now. I want to look at the trees—real trees—and—and I need air,” I tell him.

He pulls away enough so that he can look me in the face and try to pick apart what I’m really telling him. I need to talk with him. I need to speak knowing that no one is listening, and I want to tell him what I know about those in power. In return, I need to find out what he knows. At last he says, “I’d love to go see some real trees.”

But before we can tear ourselves apart from each other, I lean my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. He continues to hold me just as tightly and I breathe in and out.


	91. Chapter 91

We don’t return to the mountain that we normally go to because we’ve already been there twice this year, and we don’t want to draw attention to it as our place to slip away from the ever-watchful eye of the Capitol. So instead Pitch has the taxi take us to the edge of the city where there’s a nature trail that actually goes through real nature. But once the taxi is out of sight, Pitch leads me further along the road for ten minutes before we duck into the tree line. No doubt every inch of the Capitol’s borders are monitored with cameras, but Pitch assures me that it’s highly unlikely that there is anything that might pick up our voices so we should be fine as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves.

He brought a backpack with him that he packed while I had scrubbed the thick layer of makeup off my face in the shower, and it isn’t until he chooses our spot that he reveals that he brought a blanket for us to sit on and snacks to eat. I don’t feel the least bit hungry, but he says that we have to keep up appearances. I stand to the side as he lays out the blanket and smooths out the edges and pulls out a couple of rocks from underneath that would jab us if we sat on them. Then he makes himself comfortable and I join him.

The food goes unnoticed as we kiss, and I’m so relieved to be here with him by ourselves—or as much by ourselves as we can be—that I almost forget why I wanted to leave the apartment in the first place. It takes me a minute to coax myself away from his lips for long enough to tell him that I need to talk with him.

“So the date was a ruse,” he says.

“I’m sorry, but—”

“Hey, I’m teasing,” he assures me. “I knew that you didn’t want to be overheard.”

Right. Of course. It was probably pretty damned obvious that I didn’t want to have an actual date at 9:00 PM after we’d already had dinner with a bunch of our torturers.

Despite the fact that we won’t be overheard, we sit close together so that our voices don’t rise and fall in the night air. I listen to the hoot of an owl off in the distance and wonder what sort of wild creatures linger in the outskirts of the Capitol at night. Finally I gather myself together enough to speak.

“After we had tea with Martha, I went to the bookstore,” I say. Pitch watches me intently, no doubt giving himself points for figuring out that all my trips to the bookstore weren’t actually to buy books. But he doesn’t say anything as I continue. “I spoke with him there, and explained the situation. He said that he would help me but that I shouldn’t expect anything in the near future. And yet. . . . Then Martha died. . . . And the timing. . . .” My voice trails off.

“So you think he was somehow involved?” Pitch asks.

“No, I think that he. . . .” But I can’t get the words out. I’m so used to being overheard by the Capitol no matter where I am that I don’t dare risk it. I don’t know who Quintus works for or how many people sitting at the dinner table tonight knew that he killed Martha, but I won’t be the reason that he gets arrested or murdered. Regardless, Pitch seems to understand what I’m trying to say because he lets out a long breath and turns to look out towards where the trees begin to blend together in darkness.

“And now you’re free from her,” he says. “You are . . . very lucky. She could have been worse, yes; she didn’t torture me—no more than most of the others, at least—but she was far from a pleasant woman to entertain. But it concerns me that if her death wasn’t a coincidence, then somebody did you a favor. And how will they expect you to return it is the problem.”

“I wondered the same,” I say. “But I’ve barely had time to think about it.” And then I tell Pitch everything about our conversation today, and how Quintus had explained things without actually explaining a single thing. Pitch listens without interrupting, and when I finish, he doesn’t say anything right away.

“He’s an unusual character, I’ll give him that,” Pitch sighs. “Our time together was brief, as I mentioned, and at the time I thought that he was wanting me just like any other client. Even if—I hope you’ll forgive me if this makes you uncomfortable—he just wanted to lounge about and listen to me read a book he had chosen and not do anything overtly sexual. Then he tried to get me to help him come up with his own novel—he had me use a typewriter while he narrated what he wanted me to type—and it was all so bizarre but of course I couldn’t question it.”

“That’s . . . interesting,” I manage. Quintus takes things to a whole new level of weird. It’s so out of place that it’s kind of more disturbing than if Pitch had told me that they had had sex.

“As I said: strange.” He shakes his head. “But please, tread carefully with him. I don’t know who he is or what his real job is, either, and he’s already made it very clear that he’s not who he lets you think he is. Don’t take anything he says as a certainty.”

“But he’s already given us warning about things that turned out to be true,” I say.

“That doesn’t mean he always will,” he answers. “For whatever reason, he is drawn to you. I don’t know if he’s actually attracted to you, or if this is all political. It would be wise to assume that you are a part of the pieces he’s playing with and not somebody he respects.”

Yes, it seems pretty obvious. And yet when I’m with him, I forget that he could be feeding me lies or otherwise leading me astray. Because he has been helpful in terms of both information and offering protection, I have started to trust him. I hate to admit it, but he’s the one I’ve turned to numerous times now when I’ve been struggling with handling everything that’s happening.

A snap and a hiss startle me and I nearly jump to my feet, but Pitch reaches out and grabs my arm.

“Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says. I’m about to tell him that he didn’t frighten me (a complete lie, of course, since my heart is still galloping) but then he raises a can of milk to his mouth and takes a drink. And now I don’t have any more words because I actually can’t remember when I purchased those and they might be from last year. He sees me staring and says, “What? There were no other drinks in the fridge.”

“Did you check the expiration date?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, but I figure if it’s only six months over that date, it’s probably still good,” he says. My eyes widen and he bursts into laughter. It takes him a moment to compose himself, but then he looks at me again and starts cracking up all over. By the second time he manages to say, “It’s fine. It doesn’t expire for another few months. But your face—”

I frown at him. Super funny. Give me a heart attack over absolutely nothing.

He tries to kiss me as an apology, but I push him away. “You’re not kissing me after drinking that,” I protest. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with drinking milk from a can, but I’m just annoyed at him for being stupid.

He shrugs and pounds back the rest of the can. Now _that_ makes me want to vomit.

When he finishes it, he sets it down on the ground, carefully placing it next to the backpack so it won’t be left behind. Even with the bright lights from the city glowing in the sky, the trees that surround us create a blanket of darkness. It would be easy to not see a piece of trash out here.

“Pitch, do you think the Capitol really sees me as a threat?” I ask as I pick up a twig lying near the blanket and twist it in my hands.

He thinks about it. Anyone in their right mind would know that I’m just a nineteen-year-old and not somebody who has any great ambition for power or revolution. But yet if what Pitch says is correct and they’re trying to change my image, it must be because they don’t like what is being projected to other people.

“Yes, but they see a great many people as a threat,” he says. “As long as you don’t protest the changes and you go along with what they tell you, you have no reason to worry, though. They want to control you not kill you, and that goes for any of us victors.”

“I know that going to school wasn’t my idea, but I don’t like that they’ve taken that from me,” I admit. I start to fleck off bark from the twig in my hands, casting it away from me into the darkness. “I kept wanting to be home whenever I was in the dorms, and now I know that I’m going to be home and wishing I was over there.”

“They can’t let you have an education, not when you’ve established yourself as being somebody who is willing to challenge the system,” he says. “If you had a clear career goal, maybe. Several victors have university educations, but it’s normally something specific, such as something that will help advance production in their district. Not a desire for general knowledge.”

“So in other words, I shouldn’t have dawdled so long in choosing a major,” I say. I toss the twig away from me out into the trees.

He smiles sadly and takes my hands in his. “I’m sorry that this is how it’s working out,” he says. “Maybe in another couple years, they’ll change their minds, particularly if they see that their suspicions that you’re a danger to them are incorrect.”

“But, hey, at least I get to play the harp,” I say bitterly. Now all of my day will involve taking care of children and playing an instrument I have no interest in. “I don’t know why they couldn’t have chosen piano. At least I already know how to play that instrument.”

“I suspect it’s because anyone can play the piano, but to play the harp, you need a certain level of grace and sophistication,” he says.

I snort. “Yeah, that describes me perfectly.”

“It describes who they want you to be,” he says. “They don’t want a wild, free-spirited victor. They want somebody who is restrained and well-controlled.”

It’s not just my image then. They’re actually trying to change _me_. Make me learn new skills that they see as desirable while neglecting the parts of me that they find more problematic. I stare down at our hands together and wonder what is really going to become of me. Are they going to keep changing me over and over and over, bending me to their will until no part of the real “me” is left over?

“Juniper, I’m sorry,” he says again. “If I had known that they would—”

“But you didn’t, so don’t blame yourself,” I say. “You can’t always protect me against what they’re going to do.”

“I know,” he says. He squeezes my hands gently.

Ah, Pitch. Always trying to protect us. But he can’t keep me safe from the people lurking the corners who control my life, just as much as he can’t keep Elm safe from his alcoholism. Nor can he keep his own children safe, not when he’s up against the Capitol. I squeeze his hands back.

“If they tell us that Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune are to live with us, do you think that they’ll also make them live in District 7 so that they’re forced to be eligible for reaping?” I ask.

He struggles with answering this. He clenches his jaw and stares off into the distance. But after a few moments, he says, “I don’t think they’ll do that. The kids are well-known enough that if their names come up in the reaping, it will upset the Capitol. And their mothers are in the Capitol, too, so that wouldn’t be fair to them.”

Yes because there might be a revolution on its own if the children get sent to the arena now that the Capitol citizens are familiar enough with who they are. If they had been unknowns, maybe the Capitol could get away with it, but by making them public. . . .

I don’t like what I’m going to say next, but I chance it anyhow: “Do you think we should make them more well-known?” I ask. “So that nobody ‘forgets’ that they’re Capitol citizens?”

Pitch inhales deeply and lets it out slowly. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough that I can see his brows furrow with concern.

“That would go against what I ever wanted for them,” he says.

“No, what you wanted was for them to not get hurt,” I say. “Which means the question is what will hurt them less: public attention or potentially being reaped? Not saying that those are the only options, or even that they’ll be reaped, but still.”

“I know. I just . . . I don’t want to play with their lives like this,” he answers. He turns his attention to the blanket underneath us and he stares hard at it. “I wish . . . I wish that I hadn’t met them.”

But I know that that’s not the case. If it weren’t from the pain in his voice as he says this, then I’d know by the way he looks at them and interacts with them and spoils them that he’s glad that he’s finally met them. He wants to be involved in their lives, and I know that he’d let them go back to live with their mothers if that was truly what was the best thing for them, but I also know that he wishes that he could be a part of their futures.

I flop down on the blanket and stare up at the trees over our heads. Their branches crowd together and disappear into blackness with only a small window into the hazy dark sky above. Pitch lays down on his side next to me. We listen to the sound of the night world: owls, the rustling of leaves and undergrowth, small animals chirping in the darkness. It’s peaceful, and I close my eyes. Pitch’s fingers play with my hair, and I feel myself drifting off to a place where the Capitol doesn’t exist. It’s just me and Pitch and the night, and nothing bothers us at all when we’re in this place. At last I feel his lips on my temple. He kisses me, then whispers, “We need to get back before it gets too late.”

We spend another hour underneath the trees before we finally force ourselves to gather our belongings and find our way back to the nature trail down the road where we finally call a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reasons unknown to man, I apparently didn't C+P the whole of Chapter 90 when I pasted it into AO3. The first couple paragraphs were cut off. Ultimately it doesn't change the meaning of the chapter, but it makes things flow a little better to not just start in the middle of nowhere. Sorry for not catching that.


	92. Chapter 92

In the morning, we receive another text from Daphne, this one with the updated schedule for today. She gives the time and location to meet for the party. Although it’s in the evening, I already dread whatever they have planned for us, and I know I’ll probably spend the entire day worrying.

“The other day, I asked her if the kids could come to the bachelor/bachelorette party,” Pitch explains as we lay in bed and look at his phone. “I figured they’d enjoy it, but also . . . that the party wouldn’t be too weird if the kids were around.”

“Thank you,” I tell him. That pretty much rules out the chance of strippers. But it also increases the exposure to the public the kids will be getting. I move closer to him and at least appreciate the fact that he tried to make the party more bearable.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night,” Pitch says as he lowers the phone and turns to me. “About being more public with the kids. . . . I’ve promised them that I will keep their lives from getting disturbed; I don’t think I can go back on that promise.”

Of course. Although we understand the importance of playing the roles the Capitol wants us to, we can’t expect children to grasp the complexities of their position. But if the Capitol does decide that they’ll be District 7 citizens, wouldn’t it be better that they’re well-known rather than “safe” nobodies? I don’t bother saying anything more about it to Pitch because I respect his decision and don’t want to press the issue. Besides, I don’t even know if I’m right, and I’d hate to make the issue more complicated and damaging.

We finally get up from bed and get on our way. Once we’re dressed, we go to Esther’s to pick up the children. Esther lives in the trendier, “industrial” part of the Capitol. It’s an area vaguely reminiscent of District 8, though I’m not sure that it was the architects’ goal.

“I don’t spend the nights at Maximus’ house,” she says apologetically. “Sorry to make you come out this far to pick them up.”

“Really, Esther?” I ask. “You’ve been babysitting these kids without any compensation. I think the least we can do is ride in a cab for a few extra minutes.”

She opens the door wide enough for us to come inside.

I’ve been here once before. Last year when Pitch and I “broke up” courtesy of Lala. It’s a nice, clean place, though the ceilings are too high and the design is too cold and impersonal, like they were trying to get that warehouse feeling. To me, Esther doesn’t seem like a kid anymore even though she’s only seventeen, but when I step into her place and look around, I can’t help but recall that she’s been on her own here since she was thirteen.

Neptune runs up to see us and hugs me, then Pitch. She starts babbling about how Esther made them a really nice breakfast this morning and they went to the park yesterday and played “for hours.” Esther even joined them on the swing set. When Neptune runs back into the guest room to get her stuff, I turn to Esther.

“Thank you so much for watching them. Again,” I say.

She smiles. “You’re welcome. I like them. They’re like—” she hesitates, but after a moment continues, “It’s like having a bunch of little siblings. But ones who listen to me.” She then laughs at that.

We leave her house and pack into the cab. As we drive down the city streets, I think about Esther and what she would do if she were in my position. And then I realize that she _wouldn’t_ be in my position. She’s too quiet, too respectful. They don’t need to make her play the harp to teach her how to restrain herself because she’s already there. And they don’t need to threaten her marriage because it was so well planned, and Esther is the perfect bride: enthusiastic about the marriage, but appreciative of the opportunity she’s given. Even if she doesn’t want to marry this one particular person, she’s looking for ways to be satisfied with the decision she’s made, and she has accepted that this is how her life will be. No, the Capitol doesn’t have to worry about her at all.

I wonder if she has always been like that, or if they got ahold of her early to teach her how to behave.

Daphne shows up at our apartment before the party to make sure that everything is in order. She inspects each one of us as we go about our business pulling things together, and I know that she’s making sure that we’ll be presentable to the cameras.

We’re just waiting on Caecilia now. She finished Neptune’s makeup but has to do her own. Neptune is back in her bedroom with her, and Pliny has retreated to his own room for a moment of peace and quiet without his sister. This leaves Pitch and me with the escort.

“The first part of the party will be together,” she tells us. “There will be cameras, but they are not allowed inside. The second part of the party will be a more traditional bachelor/bachelorette party and you will go your separate ways. If it’s okay with you, I will take care of the kids and bring them back here.”

Crap. Maybe there _will_ be strippers.

“Who can we expect to be there?” Pitch asks.

“I have invited only victors,” she tells us. “So there shouldn’t be a problem with that. They want to see you guys comfortable and happy, and they know that won’t happen if there are people with whom you’re not familiar.”

But they only want us comfortable and happy for the image we project, not because they care about how much we enjoy the evening. Daphne looks at us steadily. She really has saved our asses time and time again. At this point, I don’t dare contradict or question anything she suggests.

Once we have some understanding of what the night brings us—though I forgot to ask her where exactly we’re going—she tells us that we need to get the kids moving. I find Caecilia and Neptune and tell them we have to keep on schedule, and Pitch lures Pliny out of his bedroom. So the five of us follow after Daphne to yet another limousine, and climb inside.

“Where are we going?” Caecilia asks the escort.

“We are going to TimeTrack,” Daphne tells her. The girl sits up straight and her eyes grow wide.

“TimeTrack?” she says. “I’ve never been there. . . .”

“What’s that?” I ask, a little concerned about Caecilia’s reaction.

“It’s go-kart racing,” Daphne says. And when I look at her blankly, she explains, “Everybody gets their own small cars and drives around a track.”

“But the kids—” I start.

“They aren’t real cars,” Pitch explains. “They’re small, have a maximum speed, and there’s plenty of padding. The cars have bumpers so when they crash into each other—”

“I’m sorry, but when they _what_?” I demand.

Pitch and Daphne laugh at my reaction, but I just stare at them, first one, then the other. What the hell are we being subjected to? Are we all going to die before the wedding?

“I think you’ll have to see it to understand it,” Daphne says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ridiculously short, poorly-written chapter. Not that the next couple are any better written, but what the hay. I just had to get them out and keep moving.


	93. Chapter 93

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it in all its chaos.

The limo comes to a stop in front of a big building, with “TimeTrack” written on the front of it. Daphne instructs us all to make sure that we are “put together” and then we can leave the limo when we’re ready. Outside of the vehicle, cameras wait to capture pictures and video. I watch as the crews and reporters scurry about with their equipment, searching for the best angle for the few brief seconds they will be able to glimpse us.

“They’re going to want to interview you on the spot if you’re not careful,” Daphne warns us as she scans the crowd of people. “When we get out, look happy to be here, but don’t engage them at all. Keep moving and head directly to the building. Make sure to act as normal as possible.”

At last, Daphne opens the door, steps out, and holds the door open as we all climb out of the vehicle. People immediately swoop in on us, shouting out questions and asking for us to look over towards them. I take Neptune’s hand to keep her on track, and our small group walks past the cameras—while looking _ever so pleased_ that we are going to go play with go-karts—and into the building.

The door closes behind us and I blink to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkened interior. The roaring of engines and whoops of excitement rush in upon us, and I remind myself that this is a place where people have fun so I can’t let all the sounds and the overwhelming energy knock me out. Neptune squeezes my hand, and when I look down at her, she smiles at me. It’s an infectious sort of excitement—a pure and innocent joy—that makes me smile back.

 _You will have fun,_ I tell myself. _You get to do something with Pitch and the kids and the other victors. There are no cameras here, and you’re going to enjoy yourself, if not for you, then at least for Neptune, Caecilia, and Pliny._

We follow Daphne past the check-in booth and into a large room full of small cars. Well, not even cars, exactly. They seat one or two people, and each one is more of a skeleton of a car rather than a full car, so the people inside are exposed to the open air. They’re in a large area that appears to be some sort of track. Next to the track is are cushioned benches facing outwards so anyone sitting down can watch the cars. Avoxes stand by to get people whatever they need and place the food or drinks on small tables in front of the benches.

The other victors are already here. The Capitol has invited a fair number, and they are all people we know decently enough, or I assume at least Pitch does: Esther (and Maximus), Isolde, Elm, Elijah, Ferrer, Lady, Hero of District 4, Bran of District 9, Hammer and Jericho of District 1, Demeter of District 11, and James of District 5. But I realize that one of these people I don’t know. It takes me a couple of seconds to recognize her as our newest victor, Europa.

It takes Neptune only about 0.03 seconds longer to recognize this mystery person. The next thing I know, she breaks free from my hand and rushes over to the new victor, barely stopping short before she runs into her.

“Europa! I’m your _biggest_ fan!” she gasps.

The victor smiles at the girl and says, “It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

“I’m Neptune,” says the girl, her voice barely more than a whisper. The long-awaited moment has come, and much sooner than she expected; now she is star-struck as she meets her biggest hero. The other victors watch her with amusement. They’ve already been subjected to her attention when they met her at the autograph signing, but it’s nothing compared to the way she looks at Europa, her large eyes glistening with tears of joy. It would be pathetic except for the fact that she’s a little kid and really doesn’t know better.

“That’s a nice name,” Europa says. Then she glances up towards Pitch and me. She seems almost surprised that this girl belongs to us. And of course—you wouldn’t expect that the daughter of a District 7 victor would be so enamored by a District 1 victor whose path to success was created from the splattered brains of her fellow teenagers.

Fortunately Pitch actually remembers his manners and says to Europa, “I’m Pitch. This is Juniper. You’ve met Neptune, and this is my other daughter, Caecilia, and my son, Pliny.”

Both Caecilia and Pliny stare at her in awe. Caecilia manages a polite, “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” but when Pliny opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

I’m not sure how excited Europa is to meet this little group of people, but she handles it very well. I supposes he’s been trained not just in weaponry but how to handle fame and attention—judging by how well she’s managed herself at the tribute interview and the interviews following her victory—and she’s nothing but polite as she greets the kids. As she says hello to them and asks them a few questions, I stand back and wonder why the hell no one bothered to tell us that she would be here to begin with. I’m not sure how I feel about the unexpected addition. I mean, she’s a Career and I hated what she did in the arena, especially knowing that it was her life’s goal to brutally kill her peers, but she’s a victor now, and that makes her more or less the same as the rest of us. We’ve all done shitty things in the arena, even if we didn’t want to.

Before we can get any further, one of the employees gets our attention and tells us that we’re about to begin. Then she goes over the rules and tells us how to operate the cars. She explains that since Neptune is under ten, she’ll have to ride in the same car as somebody else. I turn to gather the girl to myself only to find her clinging to Europa.

“Neptune!” I whisper.

“She’s okay with me,” Europa assures me.

I can’t tell if she’s just being polite or not, but I’m also not going to pry the kid off her, either. So I just give her a nod and turn back to the employee who is explaining that the “map” for this is very big and we’re going to be in “explore” mode. Once we have a chance to look around, we can start having races. A couple more employees come over and lead us towards the cars to get situated. They ask Pitch and me if we would like to share one or be in separate cars. I tell them that I don’t care as long as I get to drive, which makes Pitch laugh, and he says that he wants to be my navigator.

“You could’ve had your own car,” I tell him as we buckle into our restraints.

“Yes, but I’d rather be in the same car as you than be facing your wrath when you realize that the cars are going to be hitting each other,” he says with a chuckle as he leans in to make sure I’m buckled properly.

Oh boy, that sounds great. I’m about to say something to that when I notice something rather unusual out of the corner of my eye. “Elijah? Are you driving?”

Elijah, from a couple cars over, tilts his head when I speak. “I still have my driver’s license,” he says.

“On second thought, maybe it’s not safe to be on the road at all,” Pitch mutters, and now I laugh. I really don’t know how the hell this is going to turn out. I strain against my seatbelt to look around at the other cars. Most people have chosen to drive solo—including Caecilia and Pliny—and everyone is getting themselves situated and looking around. Neptune sits in the driver’s seat of the car she shares with Europa, and it looks like the victor is giving her pointers. But Neptune’s face is one hundred percent serious and her hands grip the wheel with intensity. Already her eyes are locked onto the track ahead of her, and she’s ready for whatever comes her way.

I can’t tell where the track goes exactly. I thought it was all contained in this one large room, but now I’m realizing that it disappears into the next room, too. Well, I guess this’ll be interesting. As the employee tells us that we’re not supposed to be intentionally hitting other people’s cars with our own cars, it occurs to me that I don’t even know which pedal is which. I glance down and try to remember how a normal car functions.

“Right is acceleration, left is brake,” Pitch says when he notices me observing my options.

“I know,” I lie.

“You’ve never driven a car,” he points out. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about—”

But the buzzer goes off, and everyone slams on the accelerator. I am no exception, and the cars jolt forward along the track. For the first few seconds, the whole lot of us are held together, but then we start to split apart as people in the front race ahead, and the slower people hold back the faster people behind them. Pretty much it’s all just chaos, but we manage to break free from the group and set our own pace.

“When you go into the turns, just—” Pitch tries, but I’m already in the turn and going a little too fast so we hit the wall and bounce off.

I start to get control of the handling and how to brake and accelerate with turns when we are plunged into the next room in near complete darkness. A few lights illuminate the way, glowing like stars in the blackness. Little pinpricks of light in the ceiling and walls and floating through the air. I think we’re supposed to be in space of some sort. I barely have time to appreciate it before Terra comes up in her car and knocks ours out of the way to get by.

“Slam on the accelerator and hit her car,” Pitch instructs me.

“But we’re not supposed to—” I start.

“Do it,” he says.

So I do. The car lunges forward and the nose bumps into the back of Terra’s. It’s just enough of an angle to knock her out of the way, and her car begins to spin. Pitch laughs as we race by.

“You’re terrible,” I tell him. “And here you were worried about me being the one to get road rage.”

“We were just minding our own business when she hit us,” Pitch says innocently.

Yeah, right. But the track continues to fly by, and we go from stars to a weird blue area with holographic images of strange creatures floating around us. I think we’re supposed to be in the ocean, but some sort of fantasy version because I don’t recognize a single fish or shark or whale. They’re all rather scary.

We’re about to take a corner when Elijah zooms by us and disappears down the track.

“What the hell?” I ask.

“God only knows,” Pitch replies. “Slow down for this curve.”

I do as instructed and we pass into another room that looks like a jungle with weird beasts. As we progress through the room, they become more dinosaur-like, though I don’t recognize a single one. Again, very fantastical. I take my eyes away from the scenery when we come across Elm. We’re passing him easily enough, but Pitch grabs the wheel without warning and jerks us out of the way right as Elm is about to smash into us. Elm’s car continues to travel under the momentum and we go onward.

“So the whole thing about people not supposed to be hitting each other’s cars intentionally. . . .” I say.

“Just bullshit,” Pitch confirms. “Probably some sort of liability thing.”

We start climbing uphill. I have to press harder on the accelerator to keep my pace. I can’t see, but I know somebody is behind us, and I really don’t want to get hit. The ground levels out, and the jungle opens up to a more grassy area filled with dinosaurs—ones I can actually name—with volcanoes and such behind them.

Somebody hits us from behind, and the car jerks forward. It happens twice more, and it’s not until I move out of the way that Neptune, face ever-so-serious, and Europa pass us by.

“She’s on a mission,” Pitch comments.

The dinosaurs disappear and instead we have all sorts of weird-looking mammals around us. The path zig-zags through the room. When the road straightens out, we see a car in the distance.

“I think that’s Lady,” Pitch says. “See if we can catch up.”

“So I can ram her vehicle?” I ask.

Pitch turns and grins at me. “You have to admit it’s kind of fun,” he says.

“I am driving with a madman,” I mutter.

But really, it _is_ fun. Maybe it wouldn’t be as fun if Pitch weren’t here, but I’m actually enjoying myself. Sure, it’s not a real car and we’re definitely on a track, but we’re surrounded by people with whom we enjoy being around, and there are dinosaurs to look at, and there’s no real expectation for me to behave a certain way or say certain things. I smile despite myself and press on the accelerator to see if we can catch up to Lady.

She turns a corner and we lose her. We enter another room without dinosaurs but things like mammoths and the like. Eventually we see “people” mingling with the animals, but they’re weird looking with heavy, protruding foreheads and strange postures. The road twists and turns more now than before.

“Careful with these corners—you’re going to make me ill,” Pitch says, but it’s hard to be “careful” when there’s so many of them and we’re losing speed. We eventually pass Elijah who has gotten himself stuck in one of the turns but can’t back out because the cars don’t have a reverse feature. He’s out of sight too fast to worry about, though, and I have to concentrate on the road. At last we go downhill, and then we’re in a straight area where the “people” become more normal looking, and their surroundings appear to be more modern.

We’re doing pretty good, but Elm passes us up and flips us off as he goes by.

“Accelerate. Ram his car,” Pitch says to me.

“Really, you’re more—” But before I can get the words out, Pitch moves his foot over to the accelerator, nudges my foot out of the way, and steps on it. I can only control the wheel, so I do what he wants and ram Elm’s car. This causes Elm’s car to spin out, and we push by him and drive right on past.

“You’re insane,” I say to Pitch as he returns control of the accelerator. He’s too busy laughing to care what I’m saying.

At long last, we go through a finish line that has our time recorded, and the car automatically slows to a stop. A scoreboard records us in sixth place. An employee instructs us to unbuckle ourselves and get out. My legs are kind of wobbly after that experience, but Pitch helps me out and we walk over towards the benches to sit down and wait for the others.

“You guys are slow!” Neptune says. “We came in third!”

“Who was first?” I ask as I plop down next to her.

“Me,” says Lady. “Hammer was second.”

So we get the updates about who arrived when. Pliny tells us that he was fourth but now that he knows the track, he’ll probably be first next time. Jericho was fifth, but he had been in second for most of the race until Neptune and Europa hit his car and allowed others to pass. By this time, Elm walks over toward us, scowling. I don’t think he appreciated our aggressive driving techniques.

“It was Pitch,” I say before he can say anything at all.

“Oh, nice. Way to sell me out,” Pitch laughs.

Elm plops down on the bench and orders a drink from the closest avox. This probably won’t go over well if he plans on drinking and driving, but at least it’s on a closed course and we’re not in real cars.

Terra and Elijah come over and join us. Avoxes bring around whatever beverages we want—Pitch and I just get fruit sodas—and offer us snacks. People chat with each other, and the biggest thing people are trying to figure out is how Elijah managed to race at all, let alone complete the entire course. He won’t disclose how the hell he did it.

Neptune trots over towards the track to watch the others arrive. It’s been some time since Terra and Elijah came in, so I stand up and follow after her to watch the stragglers make their way through the finish line. Caecilia and Ferrer arrive a few seconds of each other.

Neptune leans over and shamelessly drinks from the straw sticking out of my soda. Ugh. Weird little kid. She gives me adorable eyes, though, and I have no choice but to watch her guzzle down my beverage. 

“Did you like riding with Europa?” I ask when she hits the bottom of the drink and starts making obnoxious slurping sounds.

“Oh, it was the _best_!” she says, abandoning the straw. “Europa is _so nice_. She’s just as wonderful as I thought she’d be.”

I bet. I wonder if it bothers Europa that she’s at the bachelor/bachelorette party of people she doesn’t know. At least there are enough District 1 victors here to keep her company, so she’s not just surrounded by a bunch of strangers.

“Make sure to thank her for driving with you,” I say. “And let her have her space so she doesn’t get overwhelmed.”

“She told me that I drove better than she could have,” Neptune says proudly.

It seems like Europa knows how to win over her fans. I just pat Neptune on the head and we turn our attention back to the track. After another minute, we find a long train of cars emerging from the other room, with Maximus in the lead. All of the remaining victors are behind him, and he’s shouting out things for them to hear. I can’t quite catch it, but it’s almost like he’s . . . giving them a lesson. Except as the cars go by, every single person is laughing or at least smiling.

“What’s going on?” somebody asks as the victors climb out of their cars.

“Maximus was giving us the most ridiculous history lesson,” Isolde says, tears of laughter still shining in her eyes. She comes over to the benches and flops down. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite like it.”

Esther’s face is bright red. Bran looks like he might have thrown up from laughing too hard. James compliments Maximus on the best lecture he’s never paid for. Maximus looks quite pleased with himself and he sits down on the bench.

Neptune and I rejoin the others.

“You’re a history teacher?” I ask Maximus.

“Archaeology, specifically,” he replies. “Nice to know that I can put my university education to good use.”

People swap stories about the stuff Maximus said that made them laugh the most, and how aggressive things got in the front of the race, with Neptune almost driving everybody off the road.

“How did you manage to come in ninth place, Elijah?” Demeter asks him. “Wait, no, how did you even manage to drive?”

“A magician never tells his secrets,” Elijah answers.

The employee comes over and asks how many of us want to race. As fun as that was, I wouldn’t mind sitting out for this one, but I think it would be offensive or whatever, so I join the group that’s heading back out to the track. I make Pitch be in my car again but tell him that it’s his turn to drive. Knowing what an absolute lunatic he is makes me not want to be in another car if things get heated again—which I’m sure they will.

“Please don’t hurt anyone,” I say as I buckle myself in.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll follow all the rules of the road.”

Once again, the buzzer goes off and the cars race forward. They’ve kept the track the same, and now there’s stiff competition to get ahead. Especially since Maximus isn’t giving a lecture to anyone who wishes to stay behind and listen. Cars battle for first place, bumping and jamming into each other. Pitch hangs back to avoid the gridlock, but the moment that a couple of the leading cars collide and spin out, he slams the accelerator and pushes through the chaos into first place.

If the first time around was aggressive, I don’t know how to describe this. I lose track of how many times we’re knocked aside, and we spin out at least twice. Nobody stays in first place for long before they’re dethroned. I can’t even admire the scenery because I’m too focused on the cars around us.

At long last, the race ends with us in second place behind Isolde. We climb out of the cars again and head back to the benches where we find Elm, Elijah, and Lady. Elm is a couple drinks in. Lady sips on her drink. The two of them tell Elijah who came in what place this time around. As we flop onto the benches, the avoxes bring us more food and drinks. Smaller groups of people take turns racing now, and the track changes to offer more rooms and more challenges. Pitch and I go out a couple more times, but it’s exhausting. On the bright side, it seems to be wearing the kids out since they compete in almost every race with varying degrees of success.

The evening progresses as such, but finally Daphne comes over from wherever she’s been lurking the last few hours and tells us that it’s time to move on with the party. I had gotten used to being here and was actually enjoying my time, but now we’re going somewhere else and I know that they’re going to separate Pitch and me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a note, I'm no longer allowed to name another character--especially a victor--any name that starts with the letter "E." I should just lay off the vowels as it is.
> 
> Also, this chapter makes this story officially longer than the last story. Good for you guys for hanging into this nonsense for so long.


	94. Chapter 94

They separate us into different limos for whatever is happening next. Daphne assures me that everything will be fine, but then she takes the children and leaves before they can get too upset that they don’t get to go with us. Now I sit in the limo with the female members of the party: Esther, Isolde, Europa, Lady, Demeter, Hero, and Terra.

Driving go-karts has exhausted everyone, but the limo is filled with both alcohol and caffeine. Since Terra is closest to the drink dispenser, she takes everybody’s orders and passes the drinks around. I allow her to give me some fruity caffeinated drink which is almost too sweet and thick to drink despite its good taste. But I’m going to need _something_ to get me through the rest of the evening, otherwise I might pass out somewhere. Esther eyes what I have and asks Terra for one, too.

“Where are we going next?” Hero asks.

“I have no idea,” I admit.

Everybody looks a little puzzled at that. There’s something unnerving about being driven around without knowing your destination, especially as they pump you full of mood-altering beverages. But the conversation turns to how the hell Elijah managed to drive a go-kart, and everybody appears to forget that we have no idea where the driver is taking us. So far the leading theories of how Elijah managed to drive involve either ESP or that he somehow obtained and memorized the map of the track. Neither of them seem likely and I doubt he’s going to tell, so I bet it’s probably something stupidly simple, like he embraced the fact that he was going to run into walls and floored it regardless.

At last the limo comes to a stop outside of a random club. At least that’s what I think it is. The door is open and I hear music and voices inside, but the illuminated sign above it only says the name of the place and leaves off any useful information. The driver comes around and opens the door for us. We look at each other, none of us willing to be the first one out of the limo. There are a few cameras around, but nothing compared to the go-kart place. Still, it’s not the paparazzi that makes us uneasy but the fact that we have no idea what we’re getting into.

Demeter mutters something about having to look out for us children and climbs out of the limo first. The rest of us follow, and it takes a minute for the limo to empty. Once we’re all present and accounted for, Demeter leads us inside the building.

Immediately the employees want to know where the bride is, and the others shove me forward. Then the staff makes it a point to gush over me and “I bet you’re just so excited” and “the Big Day is almost here!” and all that nonsense. Finally when I’ve smiled and nodded enough that it satisfies them, they lead our little party past a lively dancefloor filled with people, down a hallway, and into a back room. It’s quieter here, but we can still hear the festivities from the dancers in the main area. This room has a long semi-circular couch so that we can all sit down and face each other. The employee has me sit in the middle and then allows everyone to figure out wherever they want to sit. Isolde originally sits next to me but then pulls Esther into the spot between us. Lady sits down on my other side. Once we’re all situated, the employees start bringing out drinks. It takes us a few tries to convince them that I don’t want alcohol.

“They’re pretending that you’re not underage,” Isolde tells me when the employees are out of earshot. “If they know you are, then they can’t serve it to you, but they want to make sure that they aren’t the ‘bad guys’ who tell you no alcohol.”

Right. They’re trying to be my “friends.” They finally bring me a soda, and I sip on that while I wait for whatever’s next.

A woman comes out and stands in the middle of the semi-circle. “My name is Bari, and I am going to be your host for tonight,” she tells us, large smile plastered on her bright green lips. “We are going to have several fun activities for you this evening in addition to dinner. Let’s get started.”

“Isolde told me there might be strippers,” Esther whispers. I can’t tell if she’s hopeful or worried. My stomach tightens at knowing that this is a very real possibility.

“I don’t think I could keep a straight face, Esther,” I admit. “I’m really hoping that they decide to skip that part.”

To my relief, they bring out canvases and paints instead. Once they get us all set up and refill our drinks and give us plates of cheese and fruits, Bari begins instructing us how to paint a sunset. By the time we actually get our smocks on and our paints ready to go, Lady is drunk. Not tipsy, but pretty damned drunk. I watch with amusement as she completely disregards Bari’s instructions and paints whatever the hell she wants, laughing the whole time. They’ve given us limited options for paint colors, so she manages to create what appears to be a burning forest though I don’t think that’s quite what it’s supposed to be. When I glance around the group, I see that there’s a pretty wide array of artistic talent. Demeter’s looks even nicer than Bari’s, and Isolde’s is pretty good, too. Terra has given up and has painted it all black with red and orange edges. Hero and Europa are each giving it an honest effort but, like me, neither of them have pieces that reflect any noteworthy talent. Regardless of the end result, it’s at least entertaining. When it’s clear that we’ve given it our best shot, they tell us that they will set them aside to dry and we can take them with us when we leave.

As the staff removes the art supplies, Lady leans into me and tells me how beautiful I am.

“Thanks, Lady,” I tell her. “But I think you should not drink any more tonight.”

“Alas!” she says, her head on my shoulder. “I have a message from the gods!”

“I’m not sure I’m mentally prepared to talk to any gods,” I tell her as I watch out of the corner of my eye as the staff brings in a large beanbag-like chair.

“The gods say that you’re beautiful,” she whispers to me. “And the crops can only be harvested under a full moon.”

Fortunately Bari comes back out and says that we’re all going to do a meditation session. I convince Lady that now would be a good time to sit up, but only because I’ve told her that I acknowledge the gods’ message and would like time to compose a reply. Bari lights a few candles around the room, plays quiet music, and invites us to join her in a few minutes of relaxation. Unfortunately Lady’s not the only person who’s had a drink or two, and Hero can’t stop snickering at something while Terra keeps obnoxiously shushing her. It doesn’t seem to bother Bari who just progresses with the meditation as though everybody follows along without issue.

I can’t quite find the meditation relaxing after I’ve consumed so much caffeine, but at least I’m not experiencing any sensory overload. Eventually I become too distracted by Lady who has her arms wrapped around me and her head on my shoulder again. She whispers that the god of storms is a far more benevolent being than most give him credit for. When the meditation finally finishes up and Demeter opens her eyes (she might have been the only person actually taking it seriously), she pulls Lady off of me and tells her that she’s had more than enough to drink. Lady tells her that she’s beautiful and the gods have chosen her for a message.

They serve us dinner now by bringing out a bunch of little tables, each with an assortment of foods. I’m hungrier than I thought I was and we eat heartily after all of the excitement (and alcohol). It might be the first time in days that I’ve eaten this much.

As we eat, Isolde leans over and taps me on the knee. I turn to her.

“I just want you to know that we were recommended to bring you presents,” she says. “And, more specifically, were told that you really wanted lingerie.”

“’Lingerie’?” I ask.

“Yes, it’s traditional to get women lingerie before a wedding,” she explains.

But the confusion on my face is probably pretty evident because Esther cuts in and explains, “Underwear. But the type you’d wear for Pitch.”

“I . . . always wear underwear,” I say.

Isolde and Esther burst out laughing. A few of the others glance over at us. Isolde keeps her voice down and clarifies, “It’s not that type of underwear. It’s kind of like . . . sexy.”

“Usually lacy and revealing,” Esther adds.

“Oh.” I don’t really know what to say to that. That’s what I’d found in the Training Center wardrobe in Pitch’s room; the generous nightwear the Capitol had left me knowing that I’d be with him. Why the hell would other people buy me something like that as a gift? Way too private to have others—even friends—buy me underwear. Damned Capitol and their interference with my personal life. And the thought of wearing that stuff specifically for Pitch. . . . I clear my throat. “I’ve never heard that word pronounced before. I’ve only seen it written down in books. I thought it was pronounced . . . well, as it’s spelled.”

“You’re so backwards, Juniper,” Isolde says with a dramatic eye roll.

“I normally don’t discuss my undergarments with people,” I say stiffly.

“Anyhow, I just wanted to give you a head’s up because they’re probably going to have you open the packages here and I know it’ll make you uncomfortable,” Isolde says.

“We tried to have them sent to the apartment, but we were told that it would be more fun if you opened them at the party,” Esther adds.

Of course it would be more fun.

“Thank you,” I tell them. I can’t avoid the fact that I’ll have to open these presents, but at least I’ll have a minute or two here to gather myself together and deal with it.

Dinner is cleared away once everyone has had their fill, and sure enough, Bari comes over and explains that “the girls” got me a little something. Then I’m presented with several packages that Bari tells me I should open. I try to pretend like this interests me, but really I want to die and disappear into the cushions of the couch for somebody to find my remains a thousand years from now.

They hand the first package to me. It’s from Hero. I carefully open it up, a little terrified by what I’m going to see. But instead I find a jacket. A beautiful jacket, at that.

“They said you wanted lingerie, but I know that you guys are practical,” Hero says. She sits several people down from me, her arm slung over the back of the couch and a few drinks in her. “And I also know that Pitch and you enjoy being outdoors. So I figured that when you wear the rest of the crap people bought you, you’d probably be cold so this’ll keep you warm. Or, you know, just wear it whenever you want because I’m not going to judge you.”

“Thanks, Hero,” I tell her. She’s right that the jacket is pretty practical. Not for the intended purposes, but I have a feeling that Hero really doesn’t plan on me wearing it over traditional lingerie.

She clicks her tongue and gives me an understanding nod that I may or may not actually understand.

Lady’s package has boots. Very nice ones, too. “You’re always wearing boots,” she says with the briefest hint of clarity after her godly mission. “Doesn’t matter the occasion. So then I remembered that Pitch told me that Lala said you were having sex while you were fully clothed and wearing boots, so I figured, maybe that’s your thing.”

“They’re nice boots,” I comment because they are and I have no clue what else to say to that.

“Thanks,” she says. Then she leans her head back and stares up at the ceiling.

Then Demeter hands me a package. “I figured that everyone else would get you weird things, so I got you something more traditional. You don’t need to take it out of the package here,” she says. I open the box and find satiny, lacy fabric. But at least it’s a nice color—dark blue—and it isn’t too terrible, at least not from what I can see in the box. I thank her and I’m probably moderately convincing, or at least she knows that I’m trying because she smiles at me.

“This one is from Europa and me,” Isolde says.

“I can’t wait,” I answer with caution. I open it up and find a pair of socks with cats on them. And beneath a layer of tissue paper, another pair of socks with cats. And then more socks with cats. I start laughing as I realize that the box is packed with cat socks. I thank them and Isolde can’t stop grinning.

Esther has gotten me what is probably considered modest lingerie. She explains that she ordered it directly from District 8 and she hopes that I like it, all things considered. So I tell her that, all things considered, I do like it.

Terra’s present is the last. I open it up and find a blanket-robe.

“People think lingerie is sexy, but real sexiness is how many snacks you can fit in your pockets,” she says. “So you wear this thing and it’s both a blanket and a robe, and then you can also have pockets, too. I have one, and I can tell you that I feel really good wearing it. I don’t even need somebody else to tell me that I look nice in it.”

The Capitol told them that I wanted lingerie, and they all knew that I didn’t. So they got creative to find the most lingerie-like non-lingerie they could find or, in the case of Demeter and Esther, were more discrete about what they bought me. I hand the package to Bari who collects the gifts to be sent back to my apartment, and I find myself wondering how the gift of undergarments has made me realize that Pitch isn’t the only victor looking out for me. Sure, I’d never trust Lady to navigate me home after a party, but I know that she’s not trying to screw me over, either. What a stupid thing this underwear gift-giving thing is. I thank them again for their gifts, but am relieved when Bari says it’s time for the next activity of candle decorating.


	95. Chapter 95

By the time I arrive to the apartment, Pitch has already returned and relieved Daphne from her duties. It’s closing in on midnight, and the kids are asleep, or at least in their rooms. Since Pitch is showering, I swap out my outdoor clothes for my nightclothes and wait for my turn in the bathroom to remove my makeup. My book and I curl up in the chair in the bedroom, and I get lost in the pages. There’s not much left, and I race to finish the book despite wanting it to last forever. When I finally reach the end and close the cover, I find that Pitch is out of the bathroom and already in bed.

“You were so engrossed in your book, I didn’t want to disturb,” he explains.

I nod, then go to the restroom to remove the last of the party from my face.

When I return to the bedroom, I crawl into bed with Pitch. He turns off the lights as I adjust the blankets and make myself comfortable against him.

“How did the party go?” he asks as he settles in.

“It wasn’t horrible,” I admit. As much as I wanted to hate it because it was Capitol-provided, I can’t say that it was nearly as bad as it could have been. It was somewhat pleasant to spend time with the other victors after I’d barely interacted with them during the Hunger Games. It just makes it clear how the Hunger Games changes us to pit us against each other; there wasn’t a single drop of ill feeling remaining between us now that the tributes are dead and the victor declared. “We went to some backroom of a club and painted and made candles and ate. I could have done without it, but it could have been worse. What did you guys do?”

“Pretty similar,” he says. “Except instead of arts and crafts, we played videogames.”

“Did Maximus kick your asses?”

“I think he was going easy on us,” Pitch answers. “Plus most people were at least tipsy—if not outright drunk—which made things rather interesting.”

I don’t think I understand any of this. Why do people do this stuff? I would have been so much happier just spending the entire evening with Pitch, not putting up this pretense that I was some happy, wonderful bride who wanted to have a “girls’ night out.” And why does everyone feel the need to consume vast quantities of alcohol?

And the gifts. It’s traditional, but I’m glad that Isolde and Esther warned me that it was coming up because I don’t think I could have suppressed my irritation without warning. Why do people care what I wear for Pitch? If I wanted something like that, I’d buy it on my own.

“Everyone was supposed to bring me underwear,” I say. 

“They bought you underwear? Oh, you mean lingerie,” he says.

“Do guys have the same tradition?” Not that I really want to hear that he received anything like that, but it would at least make me feel _somewhat_ better to know that it’s not just me who got weird things from her friends and acquaintances.

He laughs, “No, we definitely didn’t do that at our party.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. If I’m subjected to that, then you should be, too,” I say. But I doubt that either of us really should be forced to receive stupid, awkward gifts. Again, I like the other victors, but I don’t think it’s their business or anyone else’s to know what I have in my underwear drawers.

“Yeah, traditions can be dumb,” he says. “But if we had our wedding back in District 7 and you had a bachelorette party or bridal shower, it probably wouldn’t have been any different.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say.

“Did they at least get you stuff you liked?” he asks.

I’m a bit irritated that he is even asking, so all I say is, “Does it matter?”

“Alright,” he says after a second. “Sorry I asked. Lingerie is overrated anyhow.”

I close my eyes and bury my face in his shoulder. I don’t want to think about underwear anymore. He must sense that I’m upset because he pulls me into his arms and kisses the top of my head. His lips linger there and he tells me that everything is fine and that we’re almost done. I want to believe him, but I know that there never is any “done” point, not while the Capitol has its hands in every aspect of our lives. This isn’t something that we’re going to finish and forget; when we return to District 7, it may be with children who could very well go to the Hunger Games. And even if they stay behind in the Capitol with their mothers, it doesn’t mean that all is well in District 7. I will no longer be in school. I’ll be forced to play an instrument I don’t want to play. Reminders that the hell they’re putting us through now is just the beginning of it all.

When we arrive at the interview, we expect to find Caligula ready to tear us apart again, but instead it’s Janice Lovely. As soon as she sees us, she greets us and tells us how excited we must be for the “Big Day” tomorrow. She releases us to the care of the hair and makeup teams who make sure that we’re dressed to perfection, and then we reconvene on the set.

Pitch, Daphne, and I had gone over some things this morning, but I still don’t feel comfortable with being in front of the cameras despite all the coaching. Pitch keeps his arm around me and I lean into him as we wait for Janice to give us the instructions on where to sit and how to sit and all that. She talks with her crew about a few details, and after a minute returns to us.

“You two are everything the Capitol wants to see right now,” she tells us with a smile. “It’s a pleasure working with you today, and I hope you’re able to relax after the busy week you’ve had.”

“Busy but exciting,” Pitch answers. I smile as though I agree. But then he continues, “Janice, I hope this doesn’t sound rude because we look forward to have you interview us, but we were a little surprised that Caligula isn’t here.”

She smiles warmly at him. “Caligula hasn’t been feeling well the past couple of weeks,” she answers. “And I think the stress of the Hunger Games was a little too much as he was trying to recover from his illness. But don’t you worry; he’s on the mend and soon enough I won’t be the one interviewing everyone, though I dare say that I’ve enjoyed it.”

“We are glad we get the opportunity to work with you,” Pitch lies with a smile.

So much smiling. So much falseness. Just like everything else in the Capitol.

Janice continues smiling and motions us to join her on the set. It’s simple enough: a plain background with a stiff sofa for us to sit on (not very relaxing, but then again, neither is being interviewed) with roses entwined up the armrest and along the back. She goes over the usual things that Caligula does about ignoring the camera and making sure that we’re situated, and then when she gets the okay from a crew member, it’s time to begin.

“Welcome everyone, to our final pre-wedding interview with Pitch Yassen and Juniper Sadik, victors of District 7,” she says to us. And from here the interview goes on.

And . . . it’s actually kind of normal. Or at least as normal as Capitol interviews go. No one asks Pitch about children, there’s no discussion of anybody’s sex life, I’m not humiliated for not knowing every aspect of the wedding. Janice asks us about how decorations are coming along, and how I like the venue, and whether we’ve given any more thought to a wedding party. She teases Pitch about not being involved in the planning, but it’s not cruel, nor is it meant to be invasive. It makes me realize that aside from the oddball questions that he threw at us, Caligula might have been trying to achieve the same sort of playful banter with his questions, but they all just missed the mark entirely and came across as abrasive and overbearing. Pitch and I are polite and at least somewhat knowledgeable about our own lives while we fill Janice and the rest of the world in on what we know so far. She asks us whether we’re excited about tomorrow, and we say that we are and we can’t wait for it to be over, which is apparently a socially acceptable thing to say because she just laughs at our comment. She wants to know about the honeymoon, but she stays away from asking questions about where we’ll live afterwards or how we’ll handle Pitch’s children or anything like that.

Then, at last, the interview ends, and it wasn’t entirely terrible. At least I don’t feel like I need to rush away to either have a panic attack or vomit everywhere.

“Thank you, Janice,” Pitch says to her after everything is wrapped up and we have stepped away from the set.

“I really wish you two a happy marriage,” she says, and it almost sounds genuine. Maybe it is. It’s really hard to tell anything with these people. “I’ve loved seeing you two grow over the years, and I hope you find true happiness in your future together.”

And because it does seem like a nice thing for her to say, I don’t feel like I’m forcing myself when I thank her. She smiles at me, and then she tells us that she better let us get on with our business since she knows we have a full schedule.

She’s right because then Daphne whisks us away to go spend some time with Tasha and Leander who want to get us ready for the dinner tonight.

“That was manageable,” Pitch says as we climb into a cab.

“I think you will also find that dinner tonight won’t be quite as stressful as the one the other night,” Daphne says to us, her eyes on her tablet. The cab pulls away from the curb as she scrolls through information on the device. “Since you don’t have the traditional people who will be at the rehearsal dinner, they’ve decided to make it a little different and invite your fellow District 7 victors. I think you’ll find it more to your tastes, though a bit formal.”

Okay, I can deal with this.

It occurs to me then that recently the Capitol has been _extremely nice_ to us. The bachelor/bachelorette party was fun (for the most part), the interview wasn’t that bad, and now we’re going to have a dinner with people we like. What’s the catch?

Daphne goes on to say that all of the other victors from District 7—Liberty, Bris, Vesa, and Elm—will be present at the dinner tonight, and it will be nice enough that we don’t have to stress about anything else.

But then Pitch says, “Daphne . . . do you know the plans for my children for tomorrow and after? I haven’t heard from the lawyer yet. I was going to call him, but if you have any information. . . .”

She nods. “Yes, I have a little, but only up through the wedding,” she says. “Esther and Maximus have offered to take responsibility for them tomorrow, and they will be staying with them overnight so you don’t need to stress. The plan is for you guys to go directly from your hotel to your honeymoon, but if you talk with the lawyer and there is any conflict, please let me know right away so I can work around it.”

“Thank you,” Pitch says. It certainly makes me feel better knowing that Esther and Maximus will be taking care of them, if only for tomorrow. I think I owe them my soul at this point. Maybe just a kidney, but their help has been so completely selfless and appreciated that I can’t really express my thanks to them.

We arrive at a small apartment and Daphne ushers us inside. It belongs to Tasha, but oftentimes the two of them work here together in order to go over plans and come up with ideas. It seems that they get along quite well with each other even outside of the Hunger Games and they have a joint fashion line—news to me—under a different name. Tasha explains this all to me as she helps me into a dress. This one is still flattering but allows me to move more freely so that I won’t be constrained when we’re going over the rehearsal information.

“What is there to rehearse, exactly?” I ask her as she zips me in.

She laughs. “I think yours will be pretty simple, but when wedding are more complicated—with large numbers of bridesmaids and groomsmen and lots of musicians and all those things—you have to make sure that everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be at exactly the right time. Since it’s just Pitch and you and no wedding party, it will be much easier to handle. Though, I should tell you, this means that all eyes will be on you two because there’s no one else to distract them.”

“Thanks,” I say meekly. Maybe I should have gotten such a big bridal party that everyone is overwhelmed with the sheer number of people and would forget me entirely.

Tasha continues to work on me. She once again drapes a cloth over me to do my hair and makeup, and she takes an extra minute or two to work on my nails. Then she declares me finished and has me look at myself in the mirror. I thank her for her work—it’s nice, but a little more than what I’m comfortable with—and she smiles and leads me back to her sitting room where we find Daphne and Pitch. She leaves me with them while she goes to clean up her work area. Once again, Leander has cleaned Pitch up very nicely.

“To go over a couple more things,” she says. “Pitch, it is traditional that the groom doesn’t see his bride on his wedding day before the wedding, so I’m thinking that if you stay at your own apartment, I can send someone to pick you up tomorrow morning to get ready for—”

Wait, he wouldn’t be sleeping with me tonight? I chew the inside of my cheek to keep myself occupied and not say anything, but I can’t help the words that burst forth: “Can we not be traditional for once? I can’t sleep by myself.”

I catch my breath. Probably shouldn’t have admitted to something that stupid. My cheeks warm and I glance down at my hands. “What I mean is, I don’t sleep as well. And I don’t want to be tired tomorrow,” I say.

“If it’s not a problem,” Pitch adds.

Daphne studies us and then turns to her tablet. She flicks around on the screen. Pitch takes my hand and holds it.

I wish I could sleep by myself. I mean, I _can_ but it takes me awhile to get to sleep, and there’s no guarantee that I’m not going to wake up in the middle of the night and wander the halls because I can’t convince my brain to shut itself off for a few more hours. Some nights in the school dorms were torturous; fortunately I had my own room and didn’t have to worry too much about waking the others, though I’m sure they probably noticed me slipping outside in the middle of the night to gasp for a few breaths of fresh air.

“I think that it will be fine,” she says at last. “As long as I can have you two wake up early so that we can take Juniper and the girls to the venue to get ready. Pitch, Leander will be working with you and Pliny directly in the apartment.”

“That works for us. Thank you,” Pitch says.

“Alright, you two look great, so I think we’re just about ready to go,” Daphne says. “Let me go check in with the stylists.” She stands up and heads further into the apartment where I hear her ask the stylists if we are ready to go. They say something I can’t hear, and Daphne says something else.

Pitch lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my fingers. “Almost over,” he says. “Not even a whole day.”

I smile at him. True indeed.


	96. Chapter 96

The rehearsal is run by the same woman I met at the venue a few days ago. She greets me like we’re old friends, but unfortunately she doesn’t remind me of her name again and I’m just expected to know it if I need it. She bosses us about with a smile, telling us where to stand, what to do, etc. There’s a string quartet there which will be providing us music, and they patiently start and stop playing as the woman calls out for us to begin again whenever one of us takes a misstep.

The good news is that I think Tasha is right: this is far less complicated than if the woman had to herd around a couple dozen people. But at least she knows what she’s doing and how to handle situations like the lack of, well, anybody but the two of us. She walks us through the parts of the wedding both physically and verbally. Since my dad isn’t here and there is no one else to take his place, she decides that I won’t be “given away” by anyone and will walk down the aisle by myself. I don’t tell her that this is what I wanted to do because I’m half afraid she’ll change the plan to ensure that I don’t get anything that I want. Then since there is no ring bearer or anyone else to hold the rings, she takes a moment to figure that out, too. Sometimes she talks to herself and sometimes to us, and it’s hard to tell which is which. She constantly pauses to re-pose us, to make sure that our hands are in the right place, or to check to see that our feet are pointed in the right angles. I know for a fact that I will forget literally every single hand or foot position at the actual ceremony, but I go through it all as she says just so she won’t scream at me and drag this out. She pretends to be the officiant, then she has us freeze and goes around the other side as she pretends to be the guests, and then to yet another angle as she pretends to be the photographer. Everything must be perfect from all perspectives. I don’t know why, but I don’t question it, either.

Once she’s satisfied with everything, she has us start it all over again, this time running through everything in real time with the musicians playing uninterrupted. She mutters things here and there, and finally she tells us to stop and kiss. Obviously I don’t want to, but Pitch kisses me and I go along with it just so that we can leave. Then she tells us that we kissed wrong and she tells Pitch exactly how he’s supposed to kiss me, and then we have to do it again. And a third time, but she tells us that we have to kiss for at least three seconds so that the cameras can get a picture. Finally she says that it’s good and that we need to remember to kiss like that tomorrow. I glare at Pitch’s tie because otherwise I’m going to open my mouth and take it out on her.

At long last, she says that we are done and that we make a charming couple and tomorrow will be flawless. After her rigorous rehearsal, I wonder if she believes that, or if she puts every couple through that ordeal just to get things perfect.

We thank her for her work, and Daphne take us away before the lady decides that we need to run through it again.

The restaurant we go to isn’t far from the venue, and Daphne drops us off outside. She tells us to have fun and relax, but to call her if we need anything. So we thank her and then head into the restaurant. The host greets us and tells us to follow him. It’s a fancy restaurant, as I would have expected, but knowing that I’ll be there with people I like and not with psychotic Capitolites makes me a little more at ease than I have been at fancy restaurants in the past. Pressed, white tablecloths drape every table. Small oil lanterns add a bit of mood lighting. A few people turn and look at us in passing, but we keep our eyes on the host as he takes us into a quiet back room where the rest of the District 7 victors are waiting.

Pitch and I take the open seats together. Elm sits on Pitch’s other side, and Liberty, Bris, and Vesa are across from us.

“Good to see you guys,” Liberty says. She’s an old woman, but she’s pretty feisty despite her age.

“Thank you for coming,” Pitch says to the three of them. Unlike Career districts, District 7 victors do not come to the Capitol unless they have to or, like me, they’re absolutely insane.

“It’s a pleasure being here,” Vesa says to us. She smiles, her chin resting in her hand. She’s managed to hide the tired circles under her eyes that seemed to have come with raising twins. Vesa is naturally pretty; I remember being in junior high and all the girls wanted to look like her with her flawless medium-brown skin and large hazel eyes. Most if it is probably Capitol alteration (so perhaps “natural” is the wrong word to use), or she maybe she was just going through a gawky teenage phase when she was reaped and ended up quickly growing out of it. Regardless, I normally feel like an awkward little kid around her when we have to dress up. She’s such a different person than when she’s wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and trying to keep her boys from eating furniture.

Bris is more restrained, as he normally is. When I look at his serious face, I can’t help but think what Pitch told me about how the man had wished not to have any more victorious tributes because he couldn’t bear the lifestyle that they were forced to endure afterwards. Even now that we’re at what is supposed to be a celebratory event, he looks stressed, almost like he’s afraid that this, too, will be problematic.

Meanwhile, Liberty is telling Pitch all about their train ride out here and how the train broke down right before they left the district and they had to switch to a different train. The old woman is white-haired and wrinkled, but you can’t forget that she, too, spilled her own share of blood when she was a teenager. She’s a tough lady. Pitch told me once that she had broken him free from the Capitol hospital once she realized that they weren’t treating him for his suicide attempts. What a sight it must’ve been to see her pushing aside hospital staff and fighting for control of the elevator buttons before deciding that they’d have to take the stairs and wheeling Pitch off to—oh, hang on; that might be my own fictionalized version of events. But that’s the sort of shit I can imagine her doing, even as an old woman.

The staff brings us drinks. In addition to our waters, they pour us all wine without even asking. We are partway through our salad course before I realize that Elm has consumed both his own wine and Pitch’s. I don’t know if Pitch has even noticed yet.

Vesa updates us on her children. As she talks, my mind drifts to a reaping event in the future. . . . One in which both of her sons have their names multiple times in the reaping bowl. . . .

Then I tear myself away because I know that I can’t think about it. I can’t think of all the ways we victors get screwed over by the Capitol.

Bris tells us about the model train set he’s building in his victor mansion. It’s been a multi-year project. I’ve only seen part of it, but apparently it spans multiple rooms of the place, and he’s rigged it up so that you can put a small item on the train in one room and it’ll carry it to another person in another room. I think it’s part of how he stays sane after victory, and the elaborate world he created in just that one small part of the train track I saw is absolutely phenomenal. While Pitch spends all his time walking through the woods, Bris spends his time creating little fantasy worlds for his train.

“Are my parents doing okay?” I ask them once there’s a break in the conversation.

“Oh, they’re doing just wonderful, dearie,” Liberty says. “They send their congratulations to the two of you.”

Vesa offers me a smile. “I think they’re a little sad that the wedding isn’t back home, but otherwise they’re very happy for you,” she confirms. “I’m sure they understand that you couldn’t turn down an opportunity like this one.”

I really hope so. They didn’t sound like they really understood when I last spoke with them on the phone, but maybe they’ve had more time to digest what I’ve told them and now recognize that things aren’t quite as clear as what they appear to be.

The staff brings the main courses. We talk idly while we eat, nobody bothering to bring up anything too serious or important. Nothing about the Hunger Games. There aren’t many questions about the wedding, either. I guess everyone realizes that we’ve answered those types of questions a million times and what we’ve given the interviewers is literally all we know. Or maybe they just don’t want to pry into our personal lives much. Either way, it’s a welcomed break from everything that’s been going on, and I have to admit that dinner is a pleasant affair. Even after the staff clears our dessert plates, we stay around and chat with the other victors.

But it grows late, and Pitch and I say goodbye to the others. Vesa stands up to give us both a hug, and Liberty waves to us from where she remains in her seat. Bris says that he’ll walk us to the door, so the three of us meander out of the restaurant and step outside in the city street.

“Thanks for coming, Bris,” Pitch says. “I know spending time in the Capitol isn’t your favorite thing.”

Bris shifts uneasily in his jacket and glanced up and down the street, almost as though he didn’t hear his words. But then he turns to Pitch and says, “I have been told to give you a message.”

A . . . message? The two men fall into silence and Pitch’s eyes lock onto Bris. Bris is less willing to make eye contact, but when he realizes I’m watching him, he looks away and finally settles on Pitch.

“You are to receive word about your next client after you return from your honeymoon,” he says. “And you are not to refuse.”

Shit. They make short work in this, don’t they? The anger igniting within me is enough to boil my dinner in my stomach. I swallow several times to keep the sickness at bay. We aren’t even married yet, and the Capitol has already assigned him another client. It’s inevitable that they would give him to someone else, but they didn’t want Pitch to be _too_ relaxed while we’re on our honeymoon; they just want to remind him where his priorities lie.

“Alright,” Pitch replies. “Acknowledged.”

Bris nods. “I’m sorry to have to deliver such a message, and even worse the night before your wedding,” he says. “But . . . I’m sure you knew what you were getting into when you got engaged.”

“I am not stupid enough to think that I can escape this lifestyle by getting married,” Pitch answers.

“I know,” the older man says heavily. “I’m sorry, Pitch. And you, too, Juniper. You shouldn’t have to live like this.”

“But we do,” Pitch says.

A cab slows down in front of us even without us calling it. I suppose we’re out here standing idly on the sidewalk so the driver assumed we had wanted to go. And he’s not wrong. Still, Pitch and Bris remain locked in this silent dilemma that neither of them can solve because there is no solution. Pitch will get married tomorrow, and then he’ll continue to be a toy for the Capitol, as he likely will until he either dies or grows old and loses his appeal, whichever comes first. And Bris can only regret that he did all he could to bring his tribute to victory, and this is the life that he leads with no hope of escape.

But Pitch breaks away and opens the cab door for me. I climb in and he follows. Bris watches us as the door closes, turning away as the cab pulls away from the curb.

Pitch spends the rest of the cab ride lost in thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I H A T E W E D D I N G S T U F F . W H Y D I D I D O T H I S T O M Y S E L F ?


	97. Chapter 97

We explain to Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune the plan for tomorrow, and tell them that they will be under the guidance of Esther once things get started. They promise that they will obey every single thing that she tells them to. Pitch also lets them know that they will be returning to their mothers the day after the wedding; what happens to them upon our return is uncertain, and he explains that to them, too. I try to read their expressions to see if I can glean any information out of them, but they keep themselves too closed off from us. Good on them; they’re better than I am at keeping their expressions neutral so they don’t betray their actual thoughts. Pitch is open with them about the fact that there are lawyers involved, and other professionals, and that it’s going to be as fair as they can make it. I don’t know about that last part—nothing in the Capitol is fair when it comes to victors, and I fear that any decision that is made will not be in the children’s best interest but in favor of the Capitol’s image.

For the next hour or so, we play with the building blocks. With all the building that we’ve done, the pile of spare blocks grows thin. Maybe when we return, depending what ends up happening with everyone, we’ll buy a couple more large packs so we can build massive structures and not have to worry about running out. Finally we tell everyone that we have to go to bed early to make sure that we’re well-rested for tomorrow. This works in theory; the kids readily comply because they’re eager for the wedding, too. But on the other hand, they are so full of energy that it takes awhile to make sure that they get showered and changed and settled down into bed.

After things have calmed and the kids are in their rooms, I climb into bed with Pitch and don’t even bother picking up my book. I turn off the lights and curl up against him. For awhile, neither of us speaks, but we’re also not sleeping, either. My hand moves up to his heart and I feel it beating. Steady, strong. But a little too fast.

“Juniper, what Bris said today. . . .” he begins, his voice a whisper. His hand runs over mine and holds it in place against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I ask. My own heart thumps quickly. “I knew from the beginning that this would happen. It’s not like you kept it a secret.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be hard to deal with,” he says. “For either of us.”

No, it won’t be easy. Pitch loves me, not those other people, and yet it doesn’t matter. Just as it doesn’t matter that I’d rather not know that he has to leave me to go take care of these disgusting creeps, either. He has his people to entertain, and marriage doesn’t dismiss his duties. Of course, when we discussed this weeks ago (has it already been so long?) the fact that he would still be entertaining “clients” seemed vague and theoretical. But now it’s much more concrete, and it’s been thrust in our faces the day before our wedding.

“I’m still marrying you,” I tell him firmly.

He laughs, but it’s heavy and pained. “Yes, you are,” he says. “I’m lucky.”

I frown. “You’re lucky because I’m marrying you?” I ask with skepticism. “There are a lot of adjectives to describe this situation, but I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the one I’d choose.”

“You make me happy, Juniper,” he says. “I’m lucky that I have you.”

Oh. I don’t have a reply for this because my heart thumps a little more rapidly and I can’t really discern what the warmth inside me is. Not anger or fear. Probably not internal bleeding. I guess it’s happiness again, but it’s a weird sort that’s from somewhere deep and not the type that comes from driving go-karts or reading a good book. Pitch entwines his fingers in mine and presses my palm against his chest. He lets me think about what he said without interrupting.

“So it’s still worth it then? Getting married?” I ask.

“Definitely,” he says, and I hear the smile in his voice. “Tomorrow we’ll get married, and we’ll have several days in which we don’t have to think about my obligations here in the Capitol, okay? We can just enjoy our time together.”

“Yeah, but Pitch?” I ask with hesitation. “Um, I don’t know how to say this, but when I said we should get married, I didn’t think. . . . I mean, tomorrow night. . . .”

Back when I suggested we get married, the plan was to live life more-or-less normally afterwards. But now they’ve arranged a special suite for us and I know what’s expected, but I don’t know if I can maintain that part of the marriage. Not here. Maybe sometime in the future, but not right now.

“Yes, I guess that wasn’t part of the master plan,” he says. Then, after a brief pause, “You know, I think I wouldn’t mind not having sex tomorrow night. It might be the only time I’m expected to but have the ability to say no.”

I exhale with relief. Then I say, “I’m going to make a list of romantic things you say to me. That has to be the most romantic—I don’t think you could top it.”

He laughs. A real laugh. He turns over enough so that he can face me. “I bet I can come up with more,” he teases. “Just give me some time and I’ll figure out something better.”

“That wasn’t a challenge,” I tell him.

He kisses me as a reply, and I wrap my arms around him and kiss him back. It’s weird that tomorrow I’ll be married when just a few weeks ago, the thought never even crossed my mind. And yet here it is upon us, and I want nothing more than this.


	98. Chapter 98

Pitch set his alarm earlier than he needed to, and when I ask him why he thought it would be great to interrupt the last few precious minutes of sleep, he says that he wanted to spend them with me. I’m confused. It’s a nice gesture, and I like how he holds me against him in silence, but I don’t understand why he bothered.

“I thought it would be nice to not wake up in a rush,” he explains to me after a couple minutes. “Since when we get out of bed, everything will probably be chaos.”

This is one of those times he’s just trying to enjoy the moment, I realize. How he’s gathering himself together for the day. Neither of us wanted our wedding day to turn into a big deal, but it has, and we’re going to have to get through it. No, it’s not enough just to go through the motions; we have to be good. Flawless. It might not matter if we don’t stand on the perfect spots that the wedding coordinator chose for us, but it’s absolutely critical we play the roles we need to play without even the slightest bit of failure. And for that, both of us will need to pretend that we love everything that’s happening to us today, even when it grinds us down and wears us away. Yes, now I see why he decided to wake up early. I close my eyes and listen to his steady breaths.

The alarm beeps a second time, and he says that we have to actually get up and get ready for the day. For me, that means throwing on some clothes and rounding the kids up to be prepared at the venue. I’m a little jealous of Pitch getting to stay here in the apartment and get ready. It doesn’t quite seem fair that this is my apartment and yet I’m booted out. No use complaining, though, so I just push myself up and run a hand through my hair as I try to work up the energy to pull the sheets off me and move on with the day.

“Make sure to eat something for breakfast,” Pitch says. “We don’t need you passing out.”

“Fine,” I answer. “Do you want anything?”

“Nah, I’ll eat a little later. Need to take a shower,” he says. He stretches and sits up. His shirt is wrinkled, and his hair is mussed, but he looks surprisingly relaxed considering the stressful day before us. I don’t know how he manages to remain so calm when things are crazy and overwhelming. I wish I could absorb some of his chill under pressure.

“Please don’t let them put any cologne on you.”

He laughs. “Fine, but don’t let them make your makeup too heavy,” he says. “I want to actually see your face.”

“Can’t make any promises,” I say as I hoist myself out of bed. Then before Pitch can beat me to the bathroom, I grab my clothes and go get ready for the day. As I use the bathroom and brush my teeth, I try to convince myself that today is just another day and there’s no need to be worried about anything. In the end, Pitch and I will be together as we were before, and nothing will have changed except that we’ll have official approval from the Capitol to be together. That’s it. Yet there’s little to ease the panic in my mind that everything _will_ change because we’ve already been guaranteed that our decision resulted in other decisions against our will, and certainly there will be more at some point. I change my clothes and comb my hair, then I take a second to remind myself to breathe before I leave the bathroom.

Pitch gives me a hug, then tells me that Daphne will be here soon so I have to go get Caecilia and Neptune ready.

Fortunately all three kids are already awake and the girls have showered and gotten dressed. They, like me, will end up being re-dressed when we get there, so there’s no reason to fuss about wardrobes at this time. So we pour ourselves cereal for breakfast and Neptune chatters about how much fun today will be.

“My mom said that the bride and groom aren’t supposed to see each other before the wedding,” she says between bites of sugared corn flakes. “Otherwise it’s bad luck.”

Well, much of our lives are bad luck anyhow, so I can’t imagine that seeing each other this morning will make that much of a difference. And Pitch was right that by waking up a few minutes early, I’m not nearly as frantic as I could have been, so I’m grateful that I was able to wake up with him today and not alone in my bed.

Daphne comes at exactly the right time. Pliny tells us that he’ll let Pitch know where we went and that he’ll keep an eye on Caecilia and Neptune at the wedding. This gets a glare from Caecilia who very much doesn’t want a boy a year older than her to be in charge of her. So I remind them to follow Esther and Maximus’ directions as I hunt through the apartment to find my purse. I don’t bother taking the entire thing, only the book that is next on my reading list. Then Daphne, Caecilia, Neptune, and I go downstairs where we find a nice car—though thankfully not a limo—ready to take us to the venue.

“It’s going to be a long morning,” Daphne explains to us as the car travels through the city streets. “Once we get to the venue, there will be a light breakfast—”

“We’ve already had breakfast,” Neptune says.

“You can have a second one,” I tell her so that Daphne can get on with her schedule.

The escort-biologist nods. “Yes, I’m sure that it won’t be a problem as long as you don’t make yourself sick,” she says. “After that, Juniper, they will want to make sure that you are cleaned up, then they’ll do hair and makeup, and finally they’ll get you in the dress. It’s a long process, mostly because they’re trying to make it relaxing—I mean, I guess some people would find this relaxing—so they’re not rushing. I’ll keep an eye on these two to make sure that they get their wardrobes done.”

The girls are excited for this; they can’t believe how lucky they are to be dressed and styled for this event. They ask Daphne questions about their dresses—even though they already saw them when they did the fitting a few days ago—and she tells them that they’ll have to wait and see because she doesn’t know. They, of course, don’t like this answer so I tell them to calm down and not harass Daphne.

We arrive at the venue and are taken into a back room where things are set up for a light breakfast, just as Daphne described. The staff gives me tea and a muffin, the latter of which I barely touched because I’ve already eaten, and then they make comments about how I must be trying to watch my figure and that once the dress is off, I won’t have to be so worried anymore. Neptune tells them that we already ate breakfast, and for once I’m grateful that she’s so obnoxious. Then Daphne holds onto the kids while I’m taken into a small room to be “cleaned up.”

It’s like the beauty center all over again, though perhaps less abrasive because they can’t risk leaving any redness or irritation behind. They bathe me and scrub me down half a dozen times as gentle music plays in the background and a calming candle is burned nearby so that the scent “relaxes” me enough that I don’t protest the treatment. Not that I would to begin with, and it irks me that they think they have to sedate me to get by. As they groom me, they chatter with the occasional comment about how exciting today is and how beautiful I will be and how this is the best day of my life. I doubt that last one, but I keep my thoughts to myself and follow their commands as they go through their tasks for the day. Finally they get me out of the tub, dry me off, and have me lay on a table where they remove any hair that has dared to grow in since the last treatment. There’s not much, and then they give me undergarments and a thick, puffy robe.

“Juniper, you and Pitch are so beautiful together,” says one lady as she runs a comb through my hair. “It’s an honor to work with you.”

“Thank you,” I say. And I say that quite a lot as they go through the styling process. They keep saying things to me—useless things about how beautiful I am or how lucky I am or how great Pitch and I are together—and all I can bear to do is thank them for their asinine compliments.

“I originally wanted that District 2 girl to win, but now that I get to work with you, I see how wonderful it is that you were the victor that year,” a man says as he stretches out my hand to work on my nails.

Classy.

I don’t bother to thank him. I pretend like I don’t hear his comment and stare at the book I have sitting on the table with the million canisters of hair and nail products that the team has spread out to work with.

Tasha appears once I’m cleaned up, and she tells the team that they did a good job. Then she gives them orders for how to style my hair now that it’s blow dried, and what color to use on my nails, and all those other things.

“If it’s possible, I have a request from Pitch to not have my makeup too dark,” I say to her. “I think he likes the natural look.”

She smiles at me. Because if I had said that I didn’t want much makeup, I’d be waved away by whoever was working on me. But a request from _Pitch_ is much more important and must be taken seriously. I wonder if he’s telling Leander the same thing, that it’s my request that he doesn’t wear cologne. It has more leverage that way, if we say that the request is on behalf of the other person.

“Yes, don’t you worry,” she says. “Pitch is going to fall in love with you all over again.”

“Yay,” I say flatly, falling short of my attempts to instill enthusiasm into my words.

She laughs. “It’s all overwhelming Juniper, but trust me. You’re going to look great.”

Since I don’t have a choice but to trust her, I just go with it. She gives updated instructions to the people assigned to do my makeup, and I’m grateful that she actually listened to me.

As Daphne predicted, everybody works slowly and meticulously. They chat with each other and with me, and they try to make it relaxing for me by offering me things to drink and lighting more candles every now and again (which makes me wonder why they make me hazy but everyone else appears to be perfectly fine) and giving me pillows. One lady even offers to give me a massage, but I tell her that I’m still recovering from the last one I had. I hold still while they get me perfect, and then Daphne comes in to tell them that the photographer has arrived and expects me to be ready in fifteen minutes. This causes everyone to launch into panic mode, and they fly through finishing the hair and makeup and adding the final touches to everything.

Then comes the dress. It takes three people to get me into it, and not because it’s super complicated but because they seem to want to make a whole to-do about it and pretend that it’s complicated. I probably could have figured it out by myself, with the exception of having to fasten it in the back. Hands push and prod me as they pull the sturdy fabric into place. Then they hook me in and stand back to admire their work.

“Pitch is just going to be beside himself,” someone whispers, and I really hope she’s wrong. Sure, I want him to think I look nice in it, but not to the extent that these people desire.

They lead me over to a mirror, and I think they want me to crap myself with excitement, but I struggle to show any emotion at all. I look nice. Really nice. The dress is much _more_ than anything I ever wanted, but it still is flattering. The full skirt has a train—“It’s a short one so that no one has to carry it for you,” someone tells me—and the bodice is fitted but not so tight that I can’t breathe. They’ve pinned my hair up so it’s off my neck, and the makeup is pretty normal by Capitol standards. They place earrings in my ears and add a veil that falls behind my head, and then they tell me that I’m so beautiful blah blah blah.

Tasha waves a few people away and comes over to me.

“You look great, Juniper,” she says. “You’re nervous now, I know, but once you get out there, you’re going to be just fine.”

I nod and pretend like she’s right that everything I’m feeling now is just nerves related to “the best day of my life.”

“Now, Pitch did have one request with the dress,” she says. Before I have a chance to ponder it, she lifts up the layers of skirt fabric, and I panic wondering what the hell Pitch possibly could have requested that requires her to get up into my dress. But then she takes my book off the ledge and slips the small paperback into an inside pocket of the dress. She lowers the fabric and smooths it out, and the book becomes nearly invisible in all the layers. “He says that you never go anywhere without a book.”

I stare at her. Pitch requested that? Geeze that’s . . . actually really sweet of him.

“Thank you,” I say to Tasha. For the first time today, I actually mean it. I feel the weight of the small book against my leg, but it’s comforting knowing that it’s there. Of course I won’t be able to access it until I either take the dress off or find Tasha to sift through the fabric to locate it, but it doesn’t bother me because I know that I won’t be doing any reading while I’m here. It’s just the fact that it’s _there_ that means anything.

Daphne appears now looking a little ticked.

“Photographer’s getting impatient,” she says.

Tasha tells me that I’m good to go, and she passes me off to Daphne.

“They did a good job,” Daphne says as she leads me outdoors to a courtyard. “You never know what you’re getting with stylists.”

I can agree with that.

The “photographer” is actually a small team of people who are all gathered around to either use the cameras or position the equipment. I’m immediately told what to do, and we launch into a photography session that never ends. They get photographs from every angle possible with different postures and positions. As they move me about and manipulate me like a doll, I wonder if I’ll be able to get them to send a picture or two to my parents.

Then they bring out Caecilia and Neptune, and photograph the girls’ reactions to seeing me. Whoever dressed them did well; they’re wearing age-appropriate dresses and their makeup doesn’t detract from their youthful faces. They come over to me and hug me, careful not to smudge their faces on my dress. I hear the camera clicking pictures but pretend to ignore it while I ask them how they liked getting dressed up and everything. They’re only more than happy to tell me about how much they love it all and that everything is so much fun. Then the photographers position the three of us a hundred times for a thousand more pictures.

Finally I’m told that it’s time, and Daphne takes Caecilia and Neptune away to pass them to Esther. She returns a minute later and tells me to follow her. I take a deep breath and tell myself that in a couple hours I won’t have to think about weddings or marriages or anything else again.


	99. Chapter 99

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Honestly, it seems so absurd that I am in this position, even though I know that it was ultimately my doing because I was the one who told Pitch that we needed to get married. But back then, it was so damned simple. We’d just slip it into conversation that we were engaged and then when we were back in District 7, we’d head to the local courthouse and get a paper signed or whatever was needed, and life would continue as normal. Never did I imagine that I’d be forced to have a “real” wedding that would be made public to the entire world, nor did I know that I’d have so many changes thrust upon me against my will, all while being forced to pretend that I love it. I have never been someone who dreamed of getting married; it’s one of those things that I never bothered to ponder because there were more important things in life.

This isn’t the best day of my life.

At least not really.

The Capitol wanted to make sure that we know that they’re in control of their lives. And they are. They’ve forced us to have a Capitol-sponsored wedding. They’ve manipulated the children. They’ve reminded Pitch of his obligations to fuck other people. They’ve taken away my education and changed my hobbies. All so that we know who really has power in this situation. But why the hell do they even need to remind us?

_They don’t._

We already know how screwed up everything is. They could have left us well enough alone, and we wouldn’t have forgotten the Capitol’s presence looming over us. But they did remind us of who is in power because clearly Pitch and I did something “wrong.” They didn’t want us making a decision for ourselves, not like this. Why?

I don’t know.

All I know is that by getting married, we pissed them off. Plenty of victors marry, but two victors willingly marrying each other was just too much for the Capitol to handle. We did something to benefit ourselves—each other—and that struck a nerve somewhere that caused them to retaliate.

Somehow, we’ve inadvertently done something very _right_.

As I stand with Daphne and the venue coordinator near the back doors, I’m not thinking about how blissful our wedding will be but that somehow we’ve managed to hurt the Capitol, and that realization alone is enough to bring a smile to my face when the coordinator reminds me that I’m supposed to be happy, not looking like I’m about to puke.

Music begins playing and the doors open, and they send me out to walk down the aisle, and I can’t even spare a thought about being self-conscious because I’m wondering how the hell a single wedding is enough to make the Capitol freak out. And as I’m walking, I’m so damned pleased with ourselves that I nearly forget that I’m here to get married not to start poking at the fragile support of the Capitol. But Pitch is up there waiting for me, and he looks damned good, and he’s smiling at me, and I hate that I’m enjoying this, even if for the wrong reasons.

When I reach Pitch and the officiant, Pitch takes my hands and draws me closer to him. Not too close—not the unacceptable amount of closeness that I want so that I can be against him and think of nothing else—but close enough that we’re together and I don’t have to look at anyone but him. I barely pay attention for the short ceremony because my brain is buzzing with too many thoughts. Thoughts I probably shouldn’t be having. And thoughts of what the hell I’m doing with my life. And thoughts of Pitch because he’s right here with me, and the Capitol can go fuck itself because right now—right this minute—we have won. Then there are rings and something about pronouncing us man and wife, and then we’re kissing and it’s probably three seconds’ worth but I don’t care. People cheer, and we get to leave down the center aisle and into the lobby of the venue. Finally.

Before anyone can follow us back and harass us, Pitch pulls me off to the side and kisses me again in this brief semi-private moment. I don’t ever want him to leave me or to let me go or to do anything except exist right here and now. But we hear footsteps and his lips leave mine. The photographers have caught up with us and the cameras continue clicking with enthusiasm, but Pitch doesn’t release me, and I rest my head on his shoulder.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells me.

“Yeah, you too,” I say, which only makes him laugh. “You look good. And they didn’t make you look like a lumberjack.”

“Thanks,” he says.

I subtly sniff him. “And no cologne,” I add.

“All your doing,” he says.

“Thanks for the book,” I tell him as I tighten my hold on him.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says.

I’d stay in his arms for longer, but a photographer comes over, apologizes for interrupting and says that we need to start getting some photographs out in the courtyard. Of course they’ve been snapping photos this entire time, but now they want us to be posed. Pitch leads me out with the photography team. They quickly set up while one of them tells us where to stand and how to hold ourselves. Then there are a trillion photographs, but I don’t mind so much because Pitch is here. He keeps telling me stupid things to make me laugh and ruin the serious photos, but it’s not like anyone can get mad at us because we’re supposed to be happy today.

Photographs take forever because they start adding other people into the pictures. One with the kids. Then just Caecilia. Then just Pliny and Neptune. Then just Caecilia and Neptune. Then without the kids and with the District 7 victors. Then without them and with Esther and Maximus. Then the list goes on and on. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would.

I wonder—is this finding happiness despite the circumstances? I know that life is going to suck afterwards with my school gone and Pitch having to sleep with random Capitol citizens and whatever else they throw at us, but even knowing that, I’m satisfied in this one decision that we’ve made and stuck with regardless of the challenges it has brought.

Once the photographs are done, they take us into the dining room which is set out with large, round tables. People mill about; some have already found their seats while others mingle here and there. Most of the faces I recognize—victors primarily. But there are other people, too, and I assume that Pitch knows them but I honestly don’t care.

People cheer as we come in. Then we’re lead to our table where we find Esther and Maximus; Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune; and Isolde, Ferrer, and Elijah. Everyone seems to talk at once, congratulating us and telling us how nice the wedding was and how nice we look. Once people are situated, Liberty, Ferrer, and Isolde all give short toasts. Liberty talks about how she knew long ago that we’d end up married. If it were anyone else, I’d call bullshit, but who knows what sort of elderly wisdom she has. I remember last year when I mentioned that Pitch and I weren’t together anymore, she just brushed it off. I figured it was because she was just being weird and old, but maybe she saw that it was garbage. Ferrer says nice things about us and gives us some marriage advice. Isolde wishes us long life, much happiness, and many cats. Then we’re served dinner, and the attention is momentarily off us as people dig into their food.

“Well, you’ve made it through the shortest engagement ever,” Elijah says, pausing between bites to poke at the food on his plate with his fork. “How long was that? Like three weeks?”

He has a pretty damned good guess there, and it makes me wonder if he maybe knows more than he should.

“A little longer than that,” Pitch says. “But not much.”

“Daphne deserves a raise,” I say. “I can’t believe she managed to pull this shit off in such a short time.”

Especially considering this is not her area of expertise, or even interest. People agree with this and then reiterate what a nice wedding it was.

“Hey, why is there a topless mermaid in the centerpiece?” Isolde asks as she reaches forward through the flowers and candles and such to pick up the little gem that Pliny chose at the decoration store. It really is pretty ridiculous with all the elegant things set out on the table.

“It adds character to the wedding,” I tell her since I don’t want to call the kid out. “Hang onto it. I’ll put it near the potato statue.”

She grins. “For real,” she says as she slips it into her purse. “You are going to have a great collection in a few years.”

As we eat, the conversation is blissfully simple. People ask the kids what they thought of the wedding, and they all have their own favorite parts. Neptune liked when I walked down the aisle, and Caecilia says the kiss was romantic, and Pliny says the food is his favorite part. Nobody asks Pitch and me what we’re going to do with the kids or what our favorite part of the wedding was or anything. Eventually people start talking about their plans for when they get back to their home districts, and it’s nice to hear that people have actual plans with actual lives—something other than whatever happens in the Capitol. Even Esther is going home for awhile before she has to return for her own wedding festivities.

“Thank you, guys, for staying in the Capitol so you could be here,” Pitch says. “I know that it meant that you had to hold off on seeing your families several days longer than you planned.”

“We are happy to be here,” Ferrer reassures him.

“It was a really lovely wedding,” Esther says. “I’m happy that you invited us.” (In other words, that it was changed from District 7 to the Capitol. I suppose that having our friends here was one of the few benefits of having the government control our wedding.)

“Honestly, I thought that it was a rumor when I heard that you guys were engaged,” Isolde says. “I was pleasantly surprised to know that I was wrong.”

That’s funny. I wish I could tell her that it wasn’t a decision made out of love but out of survival and, I guess if I’m honest with myself, anger. This is ironic, of course, because if it weren’t for the fact that Isolde complained about me hanging around Pitch, I wouldn’t have suggested to Pitch that we get married. So in a way, we have Isolde to thank.

After we finish eating and the meal dies down, Pitch and I have to make our rounds to say hello to everyone and thank them for joining us. We linger at each table to make polite conversation with people as they once more congratulate us and tell us how wonderful everything was. Every table has more people who tell us the same thing, but we pretend like it’s the first time we’ve heard these things all afternoon. Pitch holds onto me and doesn’t let me go even once, and we get through all the social things.

But then they say that there’s going to be dancing, and we’re told that we have to have the first dance. I dislike dancing as it is, but I absolutely hate it when everyone’s watching us. The first dance only lasts a couple minutes and I force myself to only focus on Pitch and no one else (which isn’t hard at all), and then other people start dancing, too, and after a few songs, it’s socially acceptable for us to leave the dance floor and talk with people. Then we have to cut the cake but I start laughing when they hand us the knife.

“Everything okay?” Pitch asks.

“All I can think is that this is the one thing that you wanted at the wedding,” I tell him as I pull myself back under control.

He grins. “I have priorities,” he says.

The photographers want another few pictures of the two of us together, as though they haven’t been creeping after us all afternoon. They lead us outdoors into the summer evening and find the best place within the courtyard to use natural lighting to capture pictures. It takes a couple minutes for them to find the perfect place.

“You didn’t get any cake,” I tell him as we wait to be ordered into position.

“Maybe there will be some when we’re done,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t count on it. Even if these photographs don’t take ten years, then you have left your food at the mercy of a bunch of victors,” I say.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to do this all over again so that I can have cake next time,” he says, and even though he’s teasing, I can’t help but gag at the thought. He laughs and pulls into his arms. Then he whispers, “We’ll go soon, okay? I don’t think it’s too much longer til the end.”

“Okay,” I say. My brain registers the clicking of cameras; they didn’t bother asking us to pose for them, not when they’ve been able to capture a spontaneous moment.

After it’s clear that we’ve caught on, they move us into position and start photographing.

“They’re going to have so many pictures to sort through,” I mutter to Pitch. Somebody immediately tells me to stop talking. I almost roll my eyes but catch myself in time. The resolve I had to get through this day without doing something “inappropriate” is dissolving, and I’m afraid that it’ll reach a point where I snap. They tell us that we have to kiss again, and I shoot a glare at them out of the corner of my eye, too afraid to look at them and release the irritation upon them. But Pitch just pulls me closer and kisses me so that they can have the shot they want.

“You’re annoyed at them, but not at me,” Pitch whispers once his lips leave mine. “Don’t think about them—just think about me, okay?” He kisses me again, and I do as he instructed. I try to block out thoughts of all those damned people trying to control me and pose me so that they can have their perfectly manipulated wedding that they can spin in whatever manner they desire to the masses. I don’t think that we’re in the middle of a courtyard where so many people can see us. I don’t think of how much I hate PDA. I just think about Pitch and how he holds me and kisses me.

Then the photographers tell us that that’s good and it’s time to get back inside for me to throw the bouquet. Neat. I wish I could throw a lot more things than just flowers. We follow them back to the party and somebody announces that I’m going to toss the bouquet, so I have to leave the comfort of Pitch’s arms for a moment to walk onto the dance floor and toss a bunch of flowers over my head at the single women who either bounded eagerly to the stage or were forced out there by everyone else who ratted out their singleness. Terra catches the bouquet and immediately hands it over to Lady and tells her that it’s her lucky day and good job for catching the bouquet. Lady’s drunk enough that she might actually think that she was the one who caught it.

Finally—thank heavens, but finally—it is announced that Pitch and I are leaving. We stop back at our table to say goodbye to the kids and the other victors. Pitch tells his children that if they need anything at all to please contact Esther and Maximus, and they’ll let us know if it’s urgent. The kids agree, and Caecilia thanks us for including her in the wedding. Pliny and Neptune follow her lead, and then the three kids hug us. We say goodbye to everyone, and head towards the designated door. Before we go out to the awaiting car with the “just married” sign on it, Daphne stops us.

“I don’t think there will be any issues with your accommodations, but if anything comes up, call me,” she tells us. “Your train leaves tomorrow at 1:00 PM. There will be a cab sent to pick you up at noon.”

“Thanks, Daphne,” Pitch says.

She nods.

“But seriously,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

A wry smile appears on her face. “Get out of here before the press swarms you.”

Pitch and I don’t need any further prompting. To hell with this wedding stuff. We head outside and ignore the reporters with cameras and microphones. Pitch opens the door for me and we climb inside.

As I sit next to him and lean my head on his shoulder, I can’t help but think, _Fuck the Capitol; we did it._


	100. Chapter 100

The car takes us into a back entrance to the hotel so that we won’t be followed or harassed by anyone. The staff is in the parking garage waiting for us, and we bypass the front desk and go directly to the room. The staff is more than pleasant, and they congratulate us on our marriage and give us each a key to the room before explaining how to call for service if we need anything at all. Then we are left to our own devices.

I’ve never seen a room quite like this. The suite is massive with a large, white bed—bigger than even the beds they give us in the Training Center—as the prominent furniture. Nooks in the walls hold flickering candles. Toward the side of the room away from the windows is a large spa with bubbling water and a bucket of ice with a wine bottle nestled inside. A large wardrobe sits on the other side of the room. Across from the bed, a television is mounted on the wall. Out the window is a spacious balcony that provides us a view of the city many stories down below; there are no other balconies nearby, giving it a sense of privacy.

“This is . . . something,” I say as I take in the sights.

Pitch laughs. “Can’t disagree with you on that,” he says.

I open up the wardrobe to see if there’s anything I can change into—because, of course, bringing stuff with us wasn’t part of the plan and I have to rely on the Capitol’s generosity—but instead find only lacy, skimpy clothing. I wonder if I’m supposed to be sleeping in that stuff, or not supposed to be sleeping in anything at all. But I close the door and move over towards the dressers. In the end, all I can find is a change of clothes for tomorrow. Pitch comes to my rescue and gives me one of the shirts left for him and a pair of boxers.

“Are you going to be able to get out of your dress okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” I lie because I don’t want him to have to help me out. But I reconsider because I have no other alternatives and say, “No. I need help with the back.”

“Okay,” he says. “But first—” He draws me into a hug and holds me against him. His heart thumps rapidly. As does mine. He starts to say something, but struggles with the words and closes his mouth before he can try again. I almost ask him to just get it out, but think better of it. Instead we kiss, this time with full privacy and no guests or photographers or anything like that watching us.

At last he loosens his hold on me and says, “Let’s get you into something you’re a little more comfortable in.”

“Thanks,” I say.

We move into the bathroom, which is far bigger than any I’ve seen with yet another spacious tub, a separate shower, two toilets (what?), and a double sink. Thick, puffy towels sit on a ledge near the bathing area. There are a variety of soaps and lotions on a tiered shelf by the sinks. Everything is far more elaborate than anything in life needs to be, particularly a bathroom.

“It’s nice to know that we can use the bathroom at the same time,” I say as I wonder why anyone would need one, let alone two, jewel-encrusted toilets with padded seats.

“Actually I was wondering if it was possible for one person to use both at the same time,” he says.

I look at him with disgust. “Please don’t. I might throw up.”

He grins and says, “Fine, ruin my fun.”

He moves to the back of the dress and begins fidgeting with the fasteners and ties. It takes a second before he finally makes any progress, and from there he manages to unhook the rest with relative ease. He works quickly, and I feel the bodice loosening as his fingers move down the line of fasteners. I grab onto the top of the dress to make sure it doesn’t fall down. Once he’s finished, he excuses himself and steps out of the bathroom.

I take a quick shower to remove the spray in my hair and scrub the makeup off my face, then I dry off in a ridiculously soft towel and put on the fresh clothes.

Only once I’m clean and comfortable and I’m staring at the dress discarded on the ground (because there’s honestly nowhere else to put it in this bathroom), I realize that Pitch and I are actually married. It seems surreal that this has happened and that now no one can protest when I sleep in his bed or spend time with him. That’s not their business anymore. I lean over and sift through the fabric until I find my book and wiggle it out of the interior pocket. Then I pick up the dress from the ground and carry it out of the bathroom. I find a hook on the outside of the wardrobe and hang it up so that it won’t get too messed up. This is the problem with wedding dresses: you wear them once, and then what happens to them? The dress is pretty, but I’m perfectly fine if I never see it again.

While Pitch goes to the bathroom to shower, I plop down in the bed and crack open my book. It would have been nice to bring more than one, but if the resort doesn’t have a bookstore, I’ll either have to order more or find a bookstore in town. At least that will give us something to do. I fall into the pages of the book and disappear from this world entirely. It’s not until the mattress shakes that I return to reality; Pitch has finished up in the bathroom and climbs into bed next to me.

“Thanks again,” I say as I lift up the book to indicate what I mean.

“I couldn’t marry you knowing that you didn’t have a book with you,” he teases. “It would have been like marrying a stranger.”

I roll my eyes but lower the book and put my arms around Pitch.

“I’m glad you came to the Capitol this year,” he says.

“Me too,” I answer.

I kiss him and he holds me tightly and kisses me.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do for the remainder of the night. Well I know that we’re _supposed_ to do, but I don’t know what we’re _going_ to do. It’s still evening, and I’m not tired at all despite the chaos and excitement of the day.

When our lips finally part and it’s clear that we’re not going to spend the entire evening making out, Pitch reaches for the television remote and says, “Let’s see what’s on TV.”

“Probably porn,” I say as I settle in next to him.

He presses a button and the screen lights up with a list of the various programs on right now. He scrolls through them for a second before saying, “Yep, that’s porn. Oh, wait, here’s some other stuff.”

It takes another couple of minutes before we find a documentary about an artist who paints realistic landscapes. The two of us get comfortable in bed by propping up with pillows and watch the program for the remainder of the hour, and then the program that follows it. None of it is stuff I’d willingly go out of the way to watch, but since our options are limited, we take what we’re given. Pitch mutes the television when the commercials come on and about three quarters of the way through the program, he somehow misplaces the controller, so he starts telling me what the narrator is saying. At first he tries to be somewhat realistic, but then gives up and the documentary about a girl who creates clay pots turns into something more akin to a horror novel. I can’t stop laughing, and then we’re not paying attention to the program anyhow because we’re kissing again. We find the remote at some point and Pitch turns the television off before his attention returns to me. I can only think of how happy I am right here and now with his arms around me and his lips on mine. Pitch wants more, I know he does, but he honors my request and doesn’t press further.

Finally we turn off the lights. The candles still burn, a sweet smoky smell, not like what they used at the spa to keep me calm, but just regular candles.

“Do we leave them or blow them out?” I ask, imaging wax dripping down onto our heads if we let them go all night. With that, I don’t wait for him to answer and start blowing them out while Pitch arranges the pillows and tosses out all the extras we don’t need.

Then we slip back into bed and pull the blankets around ourselves.

His hand accidentally brushes my leg, and then he returns to it and runs his fingers on my skin. They’re warm and soft against my outer thigh.

“They removed all the hair,” I explain unnecessarily.

“Different,” he comments. Probably. He’s seen me in shorts before, but normally I try to evade the leg waxing that the Capitol loves so much.

Pitch then pulls me against him so that my back is against his chest and his arms are around me, though I’m pretty sure I’m squishing the arm underneath my torso. He buries his face in my hair and inhales. I close my eyes and try to think of nothing at all.

“Thank you, Juniper, for marrying me,” he says more into my hair than to me. “I didn’t think that . . . I would. . . .”

My eyes open. “What?” I ask because I can’t understand what he’s trying to tell me.

He clears his throat. “I didn’t think that I’d ever find someone who would be understanding of my . . . situation.”

My chest aches with his words. There’s something so damned sad about the fact that he didn’t think he’d ever find someone to marry him—to love him—because of his requirements to sleep with the Capitol elite against his will. Any potential spouse wouldn’t be able to handle the fact that they’d have to share him, even though he despises his “clients” and wants nothing to do with them. Anger warms within me, and I try to calm myself down, but I can’t because now I realize that the damage this unwanted lifestyle does extends far beyond what I could have imagined. They did these things to him. They continue to do it.

I try to turn around to face him, but he’s holding me too tightly, and I realize that he doesn’t want me to look at him right now. I hold onto his arms around me and stare into the darkness despite the tears that blur my vision.

“Well, you did find someone,” I say roughly. “And I’m glad I didn’t have to fight anyone off, because I would have if I needed to.”

He exhales sharply and kisses the back of my head.

“I wouldn’t have let that happen,” he says, his words warm on my neck. “I would have told them to fuck off because I only want you.”

Add that to the list of romantic things he says to me. But I can’t make light of it, not when I know that he’s hurting right now and he’s actually trying to tell me something. I let the words linger between us, and I realize that what I said was true: I’d fight someone for him. Maybe not arena-style battle-to-the-death sort of fighting, but I’d take somebody down if I needed to. Violence might not be _the_ answer, but it is _an_ answer. Very few things have only one solution anyhow.

But I’m glad that it didn’t come to that.

“I’ll kick somebody’s ass for you if you ever need me to,” I tell him. “Just let me know.”

He gives a little laugh. “I know you will,” he says.

We leave it at that. After a couple minutes, Pitch’s breathing begins to even out, and my eyes start to close. The exhaustion of the day catches up to us, and we can’t fight it off. I don’t want to, anyhow. I’m where I am now, where I want to be, and there’s no use resisting anymore, not when we have what we want.


	101. Chapter 101

The first thing I think when I wake up in Pitch’s arms is, _Yesss, I get to do this every morning._ Then there’s the realization that part of why I get to do it isn’t because we’re married but because I won’t be living in the dorms anymore. I let the thought disappear from my mind as I absorb his warmth and burrow against him.

He wakes up half an hour later, and I’m drifting in and out of a light sleep when I feel him shifting ever-so-slightly. He apologizes for waking me up and I tell him that he didn’t. We lay in bed together, neither of us willing to move away from the other, until Pitch’s stomach growls. Neither of us ate dinner last night; we fell asleep before even considering it. We ignore the noises his stomach makes until they become too distracting.

“We can order room service,” he says. “I saw a menu somewhere here last night.”

He rolls over to fumble through one of the nightstand drawers until he digs up a menu tucked into a little leather folder. I wiggle into his arms so that I can stare at the paper, too. I only recognize half the words, and Pitch has to translate a good portion of the menu so that I can figure out what I want. But after all that, I decide on eggs, fruit, and toast so that I don’t have to bother with any weird sauces that I can’t pronounce and likely wouldn’t be able to finish eating. So Pitch calls room service and places our order.

We’re still in bed when it’s delivered, but Pitch gets up and retrieves it and brings it back to us. We figure out which plate is which and then begin to eat.

“How long will we be in District 4?” I ask him as I spread creamy butter across the toast. It must be some fake butter because no real butter I’ve seen moves across toasted bread like that.

“A week, including travel,” he answers.

A full week to do nothing but wander around a resort and beach, and also the nearby town. It sounds supremely boring. And yet, also very enticing. After the month we’ve had, I welcome a week of doing nothing of great importance. But I wonder if they will allow us to go the full week in peace. Certainly they have something or another up their sleeves.

“It was highly recommended that we don’t just stay on resort property,” I tell him.

“Oh? Who recommended that?” he asks.

“Some lady at the dinner the other night,” I tell him, trying my best to sound casual about it. He’ll figure out that it doesn’t matter who, exactly, as long as we follow the orders. “She said there is a nearby town that has a lot of culture.”

“District 4 culture,” he says as he dips a chunk of omelet into ketchup. “Might be interesting.”

It will be “interesting” considering that their culture is built on murdering kids, sure. I’d love to spend my honeymoon learning about the most efficient way to train a child to murder his or her friends. But the way Pitch says it, I know he’s figured out that there’s more to the story than just exploring the wonderful things that District 4 has to offer.

Suddenly it occurs to me that this room may be bugged. Normally I go into any room in the Capitol knowing full well that it’s a possibility, but I never even gave it a thought last night because there were too many other things on my mind. The idea that this room, of all rooms, might have a microphone to record everything we say almost makes me lose my appetite, but I funnel my disgust into anger and shove eggs into my mouth before I let myself change my mind.

Once our meal is complete, we dress for the day and have several hours to waste before it’s time to go to the train station. Leaving behind the Capitol should be exciting, but the fact that the issues with the kids haven’t been resolved leaves a discomfort in me, like an itch I can’t quite scratch. Yet that is something out of our control right now, and we can’t do a damned thing. Pitch and I sit out on a sofa on the balcony and stare off into the horizon. From this angle, we can’t see what’s down immediately below us, or even the majority of the city. Instead we have a good view of the skyline and the mountains beyond that. He puts an arm around me and we spend time doing nothing at all. Not moving, not talking, not thinking, not bothering to wonder what’s in store after this.

We reach the train station in plenty of time, but as they direct us to the correct place to board, we find Ferrer waiting for us on the platform.

“I just wanted to see you off,” he explains before either of us have a chance to ask what’s going on. “I really am proud of you two.”

Well “proud” is a different sort of word. Who is proud when people get married? Is that a thing? He reaches out and shakes Pitch’s hand, and in that moment, I notice that he slips something into Pitch’s grip. I turn my eyes away to not draw attention to the exchange. Pitch casually puts his hand in his pocket as Ferrer hugs me and tells me not to let Pitch drag me off to some forest and miss the beach entirely.

“You don’t have to be from District 4 to appreciate the ocean,” the older victor tells us. “Anyway, I hope you have a relaxing honeymoon.”

We thank him and he motions for us to get on board. As we wait in line to be shown to our car, I watch Ferrer walk towards the platform exit. Of course his intention wasn’t just to say goodbye, or to tell us to enjoy ourselves. The hug he gave me was just to throw off any suspicious eyes and draw their attention away from Pitch. The device he slipped Pitch is a scrambler, used to trick bugs by feeding them garbage sounds if they try to overhear a conversation. It’s not as effective as removing the microphones altogether, but it’s sure as hell better than nothing. When I moved into my house in victor village, Pitch and Vesa had shown me how to operate one. Every now and again I have to use it, but most of the time I just periodically de-bug rooms so I don’t need to worry about being overheard at all. The fact that Ferrer seems to think that we need it makes me uncomfortable; they’d really bug our hotel room? And what would they hope to accomplish, listen to us having sex? Gross.

Since scramblers are highly illegal, I pretend like I didn’t see it at all. It’s not like the government doesn’t know that we victors use them, but the only way to obtain them—other than making them from scratch—is by stealing them and modifying them.

Pitch and I are lead to our car, which is small but comfortable. It functions both as the bedroom and the sitting room with a small toilet and shower tucked into a room at one end. We won’t be here for long, so we don’t need great space. I flop down on the couch and open up my book. Pitch comes and joins me. When I start to put the book away, he tells me no, that he is fine if I read as long as he can hold me and watch the scenery go by. As soon as the train moves and we leave the station, we plunge into darkness that makes reading difficult. I could adjust the lights, but the darkness won’t last long and it almost doesn’t seem worth the effort. The train leaves the tunnel and enters the forest that surrounds the Capitol. I abandon the book and watch the world go by with Pitch. Hours pass, and the day goes onward. The sun sinks below the horizon, and the shadows between the trees lengthen as evening sets in. Once it’s too dark to make out anything outside the train, we order our dinner delivered to the car and eat on the couch.

Night comes, and I can almost make out the stars in the night sky except for the fact that the train moves quickly and holding onto one thing for very long is challenging, especially with the tips of trees zooming by. We eventually retire to bed and I fall asleep to the sound of Pitch’s breathing.

The train arrives in District 4 in mid-morning. Pitch and I are dressed and ready to go for when the train pulls into the station. It’s kind of funny because I expected everywhere in the district to be beachfront, which in hindsight is completely ridiculous. But the forests and wide expanses of grassland we passed surprise me. We go by large lakes and travel over bridges. Finally the train comes to a stop in what appears to be a city.

When we debark, we’re lead to another train, this one a little less luxurious, but still very nice. Here we still have our own personal car, but it’s not made for sleeping. There are snacks and beverages and plenty of room to sit and stare out into the world around us.

“Looks a bit different than I would have thought,” I admit as I choose our new perch. Pitch gets us sodas and settles in next to me.

“Much of this land, while claimed by District 4, is unused and left natural,” he says as he hands me my soda. I take it and pop the top, and he does the same with his. “I have always wanted to see it—not just in passing, but to actually visit it—but it’s hard to get permission to come out here if you’re not a resident of District 4.”

“So people who live in the district can use it?” I ask.

“Yes. There are other benefits to it, such as agriculture or grazing,” he says.

I frown. “But their specialty is fishing,” I say.

“A specialty, yes,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink and continues, “And our specialty is lumber, but depending on where you go in District 7, you can find things like the salmon hatchery, or factories that process berries—they’re using the natural resources to their advantage.”

Oh yeah. I remember that being mentioned in school, but it was never given as much thought as were lumber and paper products, which are the things that the Capitol most desires from us. There are other things people in District 7 grow or harvest or produce, but they’re often overlooked in favor of the thing that makes us uniquely _us_.

“People are innovative,” he continues. “They find ways to use their natural surroundings to their benefit, and the Capitol is more than willing to support them if they can benefit from that, too—as long as the district remains primarily devoted to their specialty. They didn’t use to be this lenient, but the Capitol realized they were missing out on some opportunities. You know how much wild-caught salmon goes for in the Capitol rather than the farmed type they mostly serve us? It’s ridiculous.”

“Would I be able to tell the difference if I ate one?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nah. It all tastes pretty much the same, especially if you get higher-end farmed salmon,” he says. “It’s just the label they put on it that draws in the money.”

At long last, the train approaches another city and we slow down as we enter it. Pitch tells me that we aren’t getting off here but at the next stop, which shouldn’t be too far away. We only have to wait about twenty minutes before we begin moving again, and then another twenty minutes before we stop in a quiet little open-air station. We get up and I make sure I have my book in hand as we leave our car and follow the signs to the exit.

The resort sends someone to pick us up. We aren’t the only people going, but they give us our own car so we don’t have to share, and this draws attention from the Capitolites whose destination is the same as ours. We don’t have time to listen to them as we’re escorted to the car and invited inside. Once we are seated, we are told that this all-inclusive resort will be the perfect place to spend our honeymoon. Then we get a nice introduction to District 4: the various subspecialties, their financial success, their devotion to the Hunger Games and recent victors (thanks for reminding me that Rosa was killed by the District 4 tributes, you heartless asshole), etc. We pretend we’re engaged, though Pitch occasionally draws my attention to something outside. The driver pauses his lecture to answer our questions. Soon enough, however, we’re at the resort.

It’s a large, sprawling complex with sandy walls about seven feet high to offer the barest amount of protection from any curious onlookers. The building itself spreads out quite a ways and is at most three stories tall. The grounds have been cultivated with great care; lawns are perfectly trimmed back, decorative rocks are well-contained so they don’t spill out of their areas, the wrought iron rails gleam in the early afternoon sun. Despite its elegance, it exceeds anything I’ve seen in the Capitol because I know that the world that surrounds it is real; the Capitol citizens would never stand the weird fishy scent that wafts in on the sea breeze. I can’t see the ocean from here, which is a little disappointing. When the driver pulls up, a woman rushes out to open the car door and greet us.

“Congratulations, newlyweds,” the woman says as we step out. “We are so pleased that you have joined us at the resort.” She goes over more formalities as she leads us through the lobby. We pause briefly at the counter to be given our keys and a map of the resort and local areas. I’m mesmerized by the large glass windows that allow light in and—I draw in a sharp breath—a view of the ocean. All thoughts of whatever is happening around me disappear as I find myself drawn to the windows.

I’ve never seen the ocean before. District 7 has coastline, but from the pictures they’ve shown us, it’s nothing like this. No, back home we have rough, rocky shores where waves crash against the cliffs. Here it’s . . . I don’t know. I struggle to find words that describe it because nothing I can come up with will do it justice. The white sands stretch out as far as I can see up and down the coast. Bluish-green ocean waves rush up across the sand and crash onto the beach before slipping quietly back from where they came. Umbrellas flutter in the breeze, and families sit together while the children run back and forth to taunt the waves. Birds call out and drift through the air, breaking up the endless blue sky.

I feel Pitch standing behind me, and I know that he’s just as mesmerized as I am. We’ve seen this in documentaries and past Hunger Games and everything else, but to actually be here in person is another thing entirely.

“It _is_ remarkable,” the woman says as she comes up to stand beside me. “I think that you will quite enjoy your suite—you have the best view of the ocean of any of the rooms. If you don’t mind.” She gestures toward a hallway, and Pitch and I begin moving. As we walk with her, she lists the various things we can do at the resort: dining in one of several restaurants, relaxation at the spa, visiting the bars, swimming in the pools, enjoying the beach. She says that there are other activities, too, but we will need to inquire about each one as needed. She lists things like snorkeling and going on a boat and surfing. It all seems overwhelming, but I pretend like it’s something I’m totally cool with doing.

She stops in front of a room on the second floor.

“This is yours,” she says. “It’s in its own section of the hotel, so you don’t need to worry about your privacy being interrupted. There’s no one above you and no one below you. Please make sure to enjoy yourselves here, and let us know if there is anything at all that you need.”

She opens the door for us and stays long enough to make sure that we get inside. Then the door closes and she is gone.

This hotel room is wild. Absolutely.

Like the last room, the bed is a prominent feature. Not surprising. There’s other furniture, too, like nightstands and a dresser, and all the typical stuff. But it’s the bathroom situation that draws my attention: there kind of is none. At least nothing remotely private. The spa (bathtub?) sits beneath the wide set of open windows so we could relax there and stare out at the beach. The shower is closer towards the door where you’d normally find a shower, but it’s all glass and nearly entirely see-through. The toilet is in an alcove without a door, and the sinks are open to the rest of the room. The closet is the only place that provides any proper privacy. Everything is tied together with blue tiles on grey stone. Gauzy curtains are secured back from the windows and along the four-poster bed.

“I guess we’ll be getting very comfortable with each other,” Pitch says as he eyes the toilet. I shoot him a look and he pretends not to notice.

 _At least the view is nice_ , I think as I walk through the room to look out at the beach. True enough, it’s like we have our own portion of the world. No one’s currently on this section of the beach. I step onto the balcony and look around.

“Pitch, there are stairs,” I call out to him.

He comes over towards me as I lean over the balcony rail to see where the little wooden stairs lead to. Down below us is an area contained within a sun-bleached knee-height wooden fence. There are two wooden lounge chairs and a wooden sofa, all with cushions, and what appears to be a square box.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Looks like a fire pit,” he says.

We retreat back to the room. The large, open windows allow plenty of fresh air inside, and I really hope that they close so we’ll have some privacy.

Since we have nothing but a book and a scrambler, we take a few moments to look through the drawers. The Capitol always provides us with clothes, though not necessarily to our liking. Fortunately I find some decent stuff in the drawers. There’s a lot more “nightwear” but also some normal clothes, too. Shorts, t-shirts, a couple of sweatshirts. Plenty of bathing suits. In the closet I find wetsuits (thanks to previous Hunger Games for teaching me how to identify that article of clothing), dressy clothes, shoes, and sandals. So at least we aren’t expected to be naked all the time.

As I finish searching the room for any odds and ends that might be useful—I find snacks in one drawer, a Bible in another, and a bunch of _interesting_ things in another drawer I close right away and pretend doesn’t exist—Pitch tests out the scrambler in a discrete location in the room. Of course, “discrete” doesn’t apply to this room, so he casually leans into the closet like he’s looking for something.

Finally he tucks it away and says, “Two bugs, but no cameras detected. We’re free to talk.”

“It scrambles cameras?” I ask with surprise.

“No, but this model will detect them,” he says. “I think we should get used to double-checking every time we return to this room.”

“Why would they want to bug our room here?” I ask. “What useful information are they planning on getting?”

“Probably nothing,” he says with a shrug. “They just want to make sure we stay paranoid.”

Of course they do. Pitch sits down in an armchair. I lower myself onto the foot of the bed. We are here in the resort that they promised us, and I’m not sure how the hell to spend our time. I can’t tell if Pitch is just as confused, or if he already has plans.

“So what does one do at a resort?” I ask. There seems to be quite a bit to do, but it’s all very overwhelming. I didn’t even know what half the stuff was that the staff listed off while they were giving us the introduction.

He thinks about it for a moment and then says, “I’d like to see the ocean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At first I wasn't going to write anything about the honeymoon because I thought it would be boring, but then I realized that I mentioned it enough that people might be interested in seeing District 4 at least. (I'd hate to disappoint.) So despite the fact that this story is way too long, I said to heck with it all and continued writing. I'll make it interesting hopefully. But at least we get to see another aspect of Panem.
> 
> Also, all my knowledge of design comes from the Sims. You can rest assured, however, that all swimming pools on premise have ladders so the swimmers don't drown.


	102. Chapter 102

Pitch says we should change out of the clothes we’re wearing and put on whatever they provided for us here so that we don’t look like we aren’t appreciative of their generosity. Of course, that’s easier said than done. I make him go out onto the balcony while I use the toilet and put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Then I slip on the sandals and head out to the balcony so that he can change. It’s quiet out here, save for the distant voices of laughter and shouting and the cries of the gulls carried over through the wind. A good change from the busy, loud Capitol.

When we’re ready, we take the wooden staircase down to the ground level. We hop the fence out of our personal “yard” and step onto the warm sands.

I have never been on a beach before. Sure, I’ve been to lakes with the rough gravely sort of sand, and some parks have play equipment mounted in sandboxes, but this is different. The grains are warm and slip into my sandals as I walk. My feet sink down with each step, and I find it more difficult than I anticipated to walk. I eventually pause to unstrap my sandals and carry them. As we approach the ocean, however, the sand becomes cooler and more compact and the grains stick together with dampness. 

Pitch approaches the water and I follow him. The waves roll up the sand and break against the shore before they spread out and wash over our ankles. It’s surprisingly cold compared with the warm sand. Each time the water pulls away, it takes with it the sand grains around my feet and I have to step carefully to make sure I don’t sink in. This is nothing like I expected; there’s so much going on at once that it’s hard to admire it all without getting lost in the intricate processes of waves and sand and salt.

We aren’t the only people on the beach. A hundred yards or so away is a family with children who laugh and rush into the waves. And beyond them are more people relaxing or playing in the water or flying kites. We have our own little corner here, but nothing keeps people from wandering over here should they choose. Right now, they appear to be content where they are.

“We should have worn bathing suits so we could go in,” Pitch says as he advances further into the waves so that the water splashes around his knees. I follow him. At least there’s so much clothing in the hotel that I don’t have to worry about getting these shorts wet and not having anything dry to wear. And, anyway, I’d rather wear clothes and get them wet than deal with bathing suits. I’m not a prude and I’d wear bathing suits to the river or pools at home, but I also didn’t have to worry that somebody would take a picture and send it all across Panem. Knowing that your personal life is easily captured and distributed to the public makes you a little more hesitant when making decisions as simple as your wardrobe.

Something grabs onto my leg and I yelp and jump away, splashing water everywhere in the process. I nearly slip and fall, but Pitch grabs onto me.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“There’s something in the water,” I tell him.

He frowns and stares into the retreating waves. We’re in an area where the water never truly disappears, so he leans down and fishes through the saltwater before grabbing onto a chunk of _something_. Some weird stringy stuff. Dark green and fleshy.

“Kelp. Or seaweed. I don’t know the difference,” he says as he shows me. As he holds it up, the light shines through it and turns the dark green into a deep yellowish green. “There will likely be lots of it around.”

I take it from his hand and turn it over in my fingers. It’s slimy, and I cast it away into the waves. The moment it hits the water, I realize that I was dumb and threw it directly in front of us where the waves will only carry it back in again.

The two of us wander down the beach, sometimes in the water and sometimes on the shore. People stare at us but we ignore them, except for once when I stop to admire a sandcastle a couple of kids built. It’s an impressive thing with turrets and high walls and a moat. The kids explain how they made it, and they’re quite proud that I admired it.

But then a woman swoops over and says to the kids, “What in heaven’s name are you doing? Don’t you know who this is?!” Then to us she apologizes profusely that her children are bothering me.

“It’s not a problem, honestly,” I tell her. “I was the one who stopped them so that I could ask about the castle.”

She smiles at me and introduces herself as Penelope. She’s probably in her late twenties, but again—she’s a Capitolite and I can never really tell how old they are. Large sunglasses block out her eyes, but her lips are bright blue and match her long, wavy hair.

“Juniper, I have to say that you were just a beautiful bride,” she says to me. “The wedding looked absolutely lovely from what I could see.”

“Thank you. It was very nice,” I tell her. “Fortunately I had a wedding coordinator, otherwise it wouldn’t have been even half as nice as it was.” Is that the sort of stuff you can say about your wedding? Or is that not appropriate? I don’t even know, but I am trying my hardest to be polite to these people.

The kids still kneel in the sand staring up at us. Penelope introduces us to them, and then they come alive when they realize that there were victors.

“This is so cool!” says the oldest, a boy who is probably Neptune’s age. He bounces to his feet and shakes both of our hands. “We wanted to see victors, but we thought we’d only see ones from District 4, and that’s if we were lucky!”

Pitch smiles at him and tells him that it’s nice to meet him. The kid grins back at him.

After a minute or two of pointless talking, the woman is satisfied with her interaction with us and says that she really should let us get going. We tell her and the kids to have a nice rest of the day and we continue on down the beach.

Pitch puts an arm around me and pulls me closer. We step out towards the water where the waves roll around our legs.

“This is what we need, Juniper. Positive interactions with people,” he says.

“Because we’re being watched,” I say.

“Of course we are. Especially here on this resort. Maybe if we go somewhere else, things will be different, but here we are being judged on how much we love the Capitol,” he says, his voice only a whisper in my ear. “Interacting with people will only give us higher ‘grades,’ so to speak, and I think they’ll be more likely to leave us alone.”

“Leave us alone in what way?” I ask.

“I think they’d be more likely to let us leave the resort to explore on our own without harassing us if we do what they want when we’re here or in the public’s eye,” he says.

Even our “relaxing” honeymoon is a game to keep people happy. Although I don’t like it, I know he’s probably right. Give them what they want, then they give us a couple minutes’ peace. I nod and we continue walking.

When we reach the end of the resort property, we walk back the way we came.

“You know what they don’t have in the room? Sunscreen,” he says.

“I never need it,” I tell him. I hadn’t bothered to look because if I can get away without sunscreen, I will avoid it since it leaves my skin slick and oily. Besides, even though I darken and lighten based on the amount of sun I receive, I very rarely burn.

“I can be in the sun for a bit and not have an issue, but anything extended, and in direct sunlight like this, I’ll be fried,” he says. “Can we go back to the room to see if I missed it?”

So we return to the hotel room where we open drawers and cupboards and even the wardrobe. Finally we find sunscreen in a stupidly obvious place: a basket of lotions and oils by the sink. Pitch takes a minute to apply it to his arms and face and neck.

“If I tan or burn, I’ll never be able to shave my beard,” he tells me as he smears the sunscreen on his cheeks and rubs it in.

“It might catch on in the Capitol, if you do,” I tell him. “Next time we return, the beard tan line will be all the rage.”

“It might be worth the sacrifice to see that,” he says. Then he sets the sunscreen back in the basket and turns to me. “Want to go swimming in the ocean?”

I hesitate. Yes, I do. But I also don’t want to be seen in a bathing suit by the public. Still, Pitch looks eager to go, and I can’t tell him no because we’re at a beach and we might as well do beach things. So I say, “It’ll take me a minute to choose a bathing suit—they’ve given me quite a few.”

And they have. No two are alike, and some of them barely cover anything. I cast aside the ones that are an obvious “no” and compare the leftovers. Blue, green, yellow. Various shapes, but all my size. I find myself wondering what Pitch would like the most before realizing that it doesn’t matter because I plan on keeping it under my clothes. I settle for a two piece (somehow it offers more coverage than the single one piece they gave me). Pitch steps out while I pull it on, and I immediately slip my shorts and shirt over it, then go out to the balcony so he can have his turn. This is so stupid, having to take turns changing because this hotel room is completely dysfunctional. I wait patiently and he emerges with swim shorts and a t-shirt. I guess neither of us want to walk past the Capitolites without full clothing.

Then we head back down to the beach and once more stand in the cool waters and let the waves lap at our ankles. We hesitate for a moment, but I decide, what the hell, I might as well do it. Without bothering to remove my outer clothes, I race forward and plunge into the water. A wave rushes the shore and knocks into me, sending me tumbling backwards in a cold rush of foam and salt. Pitch laughs and helps me to my feet, then the two of us go out into the waves.

It’s not so bad, especially when he’s holding onto me so that I don’t get carried away again. We find a good place to stand that’s not quite as turbulent, but I find that if I lift my legs off the sandy ground and float a little, the waves are not nearly as aggressive.

“This is so weird, Pitch,” I say after awhile of us trying to figure out the best methods to not get knocked down or be dragged down shore towards the Capitolites. “To think that this goes out for hundreds and thousands of miles.”

Most of the planet is water. That’s basic science. There’s some land elsewhere, but otherwise the entire globe is just an ocean going out and out as far as the eye can see. I wonder if anyone has ever tried floating away to see what is beyond the borders of Panem. I can’t talk about it here—I probably can’t talk about it anywhere—but I’d love to know how successful they were and what they found out in the great blue expanse before us.

The sun sinks lower in the horizon, and it glitters off the surface of the water. It’s amazing. I bet there’s a lot more of the country like this, but beautiful in different ways. Isolde captured the ocean so perfectly well in her photographs, and if her beach photos were so beautiful and life-like, then all the other photos must also represent something as breathtaking as the ocean. And how much of this country do the regular district residents get to see? Just whatever is in their home district. It’s such a waste to not experience this sort of countryside. Now I understand why Pitch wanted to look at the other parts of this district to explore all that it had to offer.

I wrap my arms around Pitch’s neck. He turns to look at me.

“What do you think?” I ask him. “It’s real nature.”

“I once went to a place in the Capitol that mimicked a beach—it was a water park with slides—but even they could not replicate what we see here,” he says as he puts his arms around my waist and pulls me against him. “This is awesome. It’s . . . much different in person.”

The wave lap around us, rushing in and splashing our ribs, and pulling back around our legs.

“Tomorrow, we’ll find a section of the beach outside the resort,” he says, his voice low. “We can see what it looks like without human interference. I want to see the beach that isn’t sculpted to please the tourists.”

“Okay,” I say. I’m sure that this is natural, but Pitch has a point that it might be manipulated to maintain a certain appearance so that it’s pleasant for Capitolites to visit and enjoy. This might not be representative of what these beaches look like.

His lips find mine and we kiss. It’s pleasant and wet and salty as the waves spray up around us. But I feel somebody’s presence and I turn towards the beach to find a Capitolite with a camera. She drops it down quickly, and begins walking as though she wasn’t just taking pictures of us.

“Yes, I think I’d like to go to a beach without human interference,” I say to Pitch.

“I’ll see what the requirements are to leave the resort,” he says. We slog through the waves and up the beach to go back to our room. At least there is a private entrance here and we don’t have to go through the main hotel to get to our room. Once inside, Pitch says that he’s going to check with the hotel staff and leaves me to take a shower and rinse the salt and sand out of my clothes and bathing suit.


	103. Chapter 103

We eat dinner at one of the restaurants in the resort, but we choose the most casual so we can wear our shorts and t-shirts and not have to worry about getting dressed up. At some point, we’ll put in the effort to make ourselves acceptable to high society. They provide us a table near the window so we can watch the sun dip down below the horizon.

“It’s strange to not see trees everywhere,” I tell him when I pause between bites of fried calamari. “Even in the Capitol, there are always trees surrounding us.”

It’s stereotypical that District 7 residents are always surrounded by trees, but for most of us, it’s true. There are areas in the district that don’t have the great forests, but the majority of the population lives where the lumber is readily available. Of course, people on the logging crews often have to go out to distant forests for a week or two at a time as they rotate through areas to allow newer trees to grow to their full size. If you ask your average District 7 resident if they have seen an area this devoid of trees, they’d tell you no. It’s part of who we are.

I imagine that for District 4, it’s very similar. We are defined by trees and they are defined by the ocean.

“This sounds stupid, but I didn’t expect it to be so expansive,” he says, his eyes locked on the waves. “I don’t know why. I’ve seen pictures and videos, so I should know better.”

We’re almost finished with dinner when a man comes up to us and asks for an autograph. So much for the resort providing us privacy. _Then again,_ I think, _maybe this is privacy compared to what we would normally be subjected to._ So Pitch and I humor him and sign the napkin he brought over for us. Positive interactions, I remind myself. We need to make sure that the Capitol knows that we are not against them, no matter how much we hate them.

When we finish dinner, we slip away and head back to the room. I’m exhausted, but my mind races around even though playing in the waves has taken a toll on me physically.

“We can try the hot tub,” Pitch suggests with a shrug. So we turn out the lights so we can change and no one can see into the room from down on the beach, then we climb into the tub in our bathing suits and watch the stars appear in the night sky.

After the rush of the Capitol, it’s quiet here. And the stars glow brightly in the inky night. Pitch points out a few constellations as they appear on the horizon, and we sit in the warm, bubbly water and stare out into the darkness. Pitch sips on the champagne they have given us in the room, and he pours me a glass but I only take a sip before I decide it’s not my thing. He watches my reaction with amusement as he raises his glass to his lips.

“You’re going to have to learn how to pretend to like it—that, and other drinks—at some point or another,” he says. He puts an arm around my shoulders. “The Capitol loves their alcohol.”

“I think I pretend enough,” I answer as I set the glass down. “And, anyway, I see no reason to convince _you_ that I like champagne. By the way, you know that this hot tub says ‘do not drink alcohol while using’?”

“A technicality,” he says. “Another liability issue. Just like it says that you’re not supposed to wear clothing in it.”

“Bullshit. It doesn’t say that,” I protest.

“Yes it does,” he answers with a grin.

I stare at him with annoyance. There’s no way to check right not because the list of things you shouldn’t do was stupidly stuck to the inside of the tub which is now obscured by the water. And I’m about ninety-five percent sure that he’s making that up.

He doesn’t reassure me that he’s kidding but just takes another sip of the champagne and sets the glass to the side. His attention drifts away from the hot tub as his gaze is drawn to the stars shining in the sky above the rolling waves.

Something in my stomach tightens and I can’t figure out what the hell that means. I’m not feeling ill or angry or any afraid—none of my usual issues. And then it occurs to me that he wasn’t entirely teasing me. The spa does not say that clothes aren’t allowed and he knows that I know this, but he wouldn’t mind if I humored his request anyhow. The idea of taking my clothes off for Pitch is . . . not as strange as it once was. If I’m honest with myself. Not if I can do it on my own terms without people forcing me to or telling me how I should feel about things. The past couple weeks, I haven’t been able to think about our relationship or what it means or how it’s advanced; I’ve just been treading water so that I don’t drown.

_If you had told me a month ago that I’d be having these thoughts. . . ._

“What are the requirements to leave the resort?” I ask him, trying to brush these things out of my head. I watch the bubbles erupt at the spa’s surface. It’s a constant stream of warmth jetting out from around the tub.

“I just had to put our names on a list and give them our phone numbers,” he answers. “We’re free to come and go as we please as long as we are back here for our ride to the train station.”

That’s a ridiculous amount of freedom, all things considered. And Pitch and I will have to be careful not let them think we’re abusing it in any way.

“That’s it?” I ask. “They’ll just let us go off and do what we want?”

“There’s a limited area that we can travel in, but it shouldn’t impact us too much,” he says. “At least it’ll get us off resort property for a few hours.”

“It must be weird for people from District 4 to come to the Capitol,” I say after a minute or two. “To see the beach all the time and then find a place that has next to no water, save for a few lakes.”

“Same with people from some of the other districts,” he tells me. “District 9, for example. Most of it is open land. No big mountains, no sizable forests. And then they come to the Capitol and find themselves surrounded by tall buildings and trees and mountains.”

“Have you been out there?” I ask. “Is it strange not having anything but grains?”

It’s a risky question because I know that his travels to other districts were not always out of his own free will, but I figure that if he doesn’t want to answer, I won’t press him further. Still, it’s fascinating to know that Pitch and Isolde and even Daphne have been able to move out of their designated area and explore other parts of the country. I would love to see it all, even the places without trees.

“Yes, I’ve been there,” he says. “It takes some time to get used to it. You feel so open and exposed, like anything can attack you at any time and you have no way to protect yourself.”

“And the ocean doesn’t make you feel the same way?” I ask.

“Oh, there are forests nearby,” he says. “If I get too homesick, I’ll just go find one of those.”

We finally decide to turn off the hot tub and get ready for bed. As we did before, we play the whole “one person stays outside while the other changes” thing, but now that my thoughts have caught up with me after rushing through the past few weeks, I wonder if it would really be terrible to not care that much and just change without worrying. I wring out my wet bathing suit and tell Pitch that it’s his turn before I can go too far down that path of thought.

“I feel like the entire room is moving,” I say as we lie together in bed. “I was knocked over one too many time by the waves and they’ve seemed to jumble my brain.”

“That will go away,” Pitch assures me.

I move against him and close my eyes as I wait for the swaying to settle down. After a minute or two, it does, or maybe I just get used to it. I become aware that Pitch is stroking my head, brushing my hair behind my ear. When I open my eyes, his hand doesn’t stop.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah, probably,” I say.

But his touch is soothing, and I close my eyes again. I suppose this is how it’s always been, that his warmth is enough to calm me down and bring my discomfort to a more manageable state. He’s known this and he is always there to offer me respite from whatever is going on. To hold me back when I’m going to lose myself. It wasn’t ever a requirement. He could have given me advice and detached himself from me like most victors do with their victorious tributes. But he didn’t. He’s still with me, calming me down when I am not feeling well and staying with me regardless of the circumstances.


	104. Chapter 104

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas. Some more chapters for you.

In the morning, the weather forecast predicts light rain, so we postpone our walk for later. Instead Pitch suggests that we check out the local town. It’s a short walk away and the rain hasn’t set in yet, but a thick fog had rolled in during the night and settled on the coast. I pull on a sweatshirt they gave me, but there are no long pants in the closet, so I accept that my poor hairless legs will just have to freeze. After a light breakfast, we head out to the town.

It takes about fifteen minutes to reach there. Of course it would have been faster if we had taken a cab, but there’s no point in driving when one can walk just as easily. Anyway, it warms me up enough that I don’t feel quite as chilled, and by the time we reach the town, the sun peaks through the clouds. It’s just a tease, though, because it disappears moments later and a drizzle begins. We step under an awning as the first drops plop down.

It’s a quaint town, but it’s clearly something that relies heavily on tourism because I don’t see a single home. Small businesses and quiet restaurants fill the streets. The roads are just big enough to let two cars through, and the sidewalks stretch out to accommodate several people abreast. Planters of what I assume to be native plants dot the sidewalks and provide minimal covering from the rain.

In some ways, it’s a miniature, mellower version of the Capitol with eye-grabbing displays that entice window shoppers inside. But the things here are not as extreme as you would find in the Capitol. Sure, there are many similarities: tea shops, cafes, antiques, crystal healing, knickknacks, boutiques, etc. But there aren’t the flashing lights and neon signs and offers to change your image from one thing to another. Fishing and oceanic life are common themes woven through the displays, and in a way they unify the various stores. I’m apprehensive of approaching any of them, and I tuck away my curiosity for another time.

We spend a good hour wandering the streets. Sometimes shopkeepers come out to talk with us, and unlike in the Capitol, we humor them and exchange a few words. Other times people watch us with great curiosity, but very few go out of their way to bother us. We interest most people, but they appear to have the decency not to harass us. Finally we break away from the town and find ourselves along the waterfront. A large, wooden platform stretches out into the ocean, and on it are more buildings. Boats tied to the platform bob up and down as the waves roll underneath them.

“A pier,” Pitch says. I look at him with confusion, and he explains that that’s what you call one of these, and it’s similar to the wooden pathways of some of the nature trails we’re familiar with. “Let’s go check it out.”

So we head out onto the pier, and I’m distinctly aware that my feet are leaving ground again. An uneasiness moves through me, and I realize that it’s not the disconnection from solid earth as much as it is the fact that it reminds me of Rosa and the 141st Hunger Games. I grasp onto a wooden railing and catch my breath. Pitch puts a hand on my shoulder and when I release the railing, he guides me towards the center of the walkway.

“You okay?” he whispers.

“Yep, I’m fine,” I say, though the tension is still in my voice. I clear my throat and pick up my pace a little, just enough to show that I really am fine and I’m not lying about it.

Along one side of the pier, we find more shops and restaurants. They even have an arcade, not unlike the one at the laser tag place we went to. Of course it’s smaller and has natural light, but the beeping machines and loud music are reminiscent of the place we went before. We pass by a couple more shops, and then Pitch says that he wants to visit an art gallery. I follow him inside.

Realistic paintings of the ocean fill canvases of all sizes: the beach, the waves, the town itself, the pier, under the water. Some focus on wildlife such as sharks and dolphins while others capture an overall atmosphere or emotion.

“Are you getting into painting now?” I ask Pitch as he admires a work of a little furry otter lying on its back with an urchin its paws. It floats on water that’s so realistic, I feel like if I touched the canvas my fingers would get wet.

“I just thought it would be nice to have something to remember our trip by. We could put it in our house somewhere—maybe in the dining room,” he says.

It takes me a second to realize that he’s not bluffing for the sake of appearances. He studies each painting intently, his eyes soaking up the details in the canvases.

 _Our house._ Suddenly everything becomes so real that I almost have to sit down. He’s talking about something for us that is separate from the Hunger Games and the victor status that draws us together. He’s talking about a future together. I suddenly feel mature, like it’s clicking in that I’m an adult. Kind of stupid, but I’m too busy wondering what else this togetherness entails.

I slip my hand in Pitch’s.

“What about that one? For the sitting room?” I ask as I point towards one of whales swimming beneath the waves. The sheer quantity of water unnerves me, but that says something about the talent that the artist has.

“You like that one?” he asks. “That’s a good one.”

So he buys it and has it shipped back to District 7.

The artist himself is present in the store and comes over to thank us for our purchase. He give us his business card and thanks us several more times over.

“It’s an honor to know that my work will be in your mansion,” the man says.

Pitch smiles and says, “We are honored to have your painting in our home.”

This makes the man turn red and he smiles. But finally he says that he has to get back to work, and he excuses himself. Pitch and I head back outside.

“You chose a nice one,” he says.

“Thank you for buying it,” I tell him. We’re victors, so finances are never an issue. But besides things like food, transportation, or—in my case—books, we rarely buy anything. I don’t think I’ve seen Pitch actually go out of his way to make a purchase.

We continue down the pier, and when we reach the end, we find a large hole in the center. Although it’s fenced off to keep people from falling in, I approach with trepidation. But when I lean over and look down, I see a whole bunch of massive, fat animals lounging around on a wooden platform.

“Sea lions,” Pitch tells me. One of them moves, throwing his large head back and forth. His body begins wiggling, and he inches over towards the edge—crawling over his friends in the process—and throws himself into the water. This gets the rest of them all riled up and they start making an obnoxious “barking” noise. Still, they’re kind of endearing, and Pitch and I lean against the rail and watch them flop about and throw their weight around. Sometimes they settle down, but it doesn’t take much to get them all riled up again.

By this time, more people mill about on the pier. The fog has burned off though clouds still hang in the sky. Aside from the brief shower, there has been no more rain. People join us at the railing, and they point down at the animals and chatter between each other. Some of these people are clearly Capitolites with their strange clothes and makeup and hair, but others appear more normal and comfortable. They must be District 4 residents. When it gets a bit too crowded, Pitch and I meander away, back down the pier towards the shore. It’s not so bad walking here if you can forget that you have nothing but a couple chunks of wood between you and the ocean—and if you don’t remember your dead tribute. But I’m relieved when we step on land again.

We eat at a small outdoor restaurant for lunch. Some random people invite us to join them at their table, and as much as we want to say no, we humor them and they introduce themselves and tell us all about their decision to come to District 4 for vacation—“District 2 is normally our go-to, but it was becoming a little repetitive”—and how much they love it here. We don’t have to say much but listen to them talk and throw in a few words here and there. When we’re all finished, they pay for our meal and tell us that they are so excited about our wedding and to consider it their gift to us. We thank them, and then we go our separate ways.

“Not very relaxing,” I mutter to Pitch as we amble down the street.

“Nope,” he says. “But we had a nice morning otherwise, right?”

I don’t answer because all of a sudden I see the one thing I want most: a bookstore. Its presence is so sudden and surprising and welcomed that I’m a few feet ahead of Pitch before I realize that I should wait for him. He walks painfully slow, but I keep by his side until we’re through the doors and I can no longer be contained.

The store isn’t as big as the ones in the Capitol—or even in District 7—and they only have a copy or two of each book, save for the most popular ones. I vanish into the stacks of books and choose the most interesting of titles, which are a great many, though I limit myself to only what I can hold. Pitch eventually finds me, and though he says nothing, I can see in his expression that he’s bored out of his mind already. So I tear myself away from a shelf of adventure novels and waddle over towards the cash register with my armload of books.

“Juniper, Pitch, it’s great to see you in this shop,” says the attendant. She smiles at us and begins scanning the books as she continues, “We were so excited when we heard you were coming to our district. How do you like it so far?”

“It’s beautiful,” Pitch says.

“You have a great bookstore,” I say.

She smiles at us. “Thank you. I’m glad you are enjoying your time here,” she tells us. She scans the last book. I pay her and she hands me the receipt with a promise to have the books delivered to the resort. But before I step away, she says, “Oh, and this is a gift for you.”

The woman picks up a book from under the counter and extends her arm. I reach forward and take the book. Is this customary? Free books for visiting? I can appreciate that. But when I thank her, she just smiles at me and tells me to have a great rest of our stay.

When we get out of the store, I pause to look at the book. But when I see the title and read the blurb, I frown. This couldn’t have been a mere coincidence; there’s no way that this is a complementary free book.

“What’s wrong?” Pitch asks.

“This is weird. It’s the prequel to the trilogy I’m currently reading,” I tell him. “What are the chances of that?”

Considering the fact that I don’t publicly announce what books I’m reading and I normally don’t read in public either, the chances that this is coincidence is pretty damn low.

“That’s odd,” he comments.

We start walking again, and I open up the book and flip through the pages. Judging by the slightly worn paper, it’s used but still in great condition. I have no problem with used books, of course, but it only makes the situation more perplexing. Why the hell would I get a free used book that matches up with what I’m reading?

It’s not until I flip to the very first page that I see the initials “Q. L.” written in pencil with random numbers beneath it.

“Pitch,” I say as I stop walking.

“Hmm?” he asks, turning away from one of the windows. He realizes that I’ve stopped and steps back a few paces towards me. “Something wrong?”

Aside from the fact that Quintus has managed to follow me to District 4, no. But _why_? As I stare at the book, I realize that he obviously wants something from me, and not something that can be said aloud. By standing here like an idiot, I draw attention from every passer-by and camera, so I snap the book shut and look back at him.

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just looking forward to reading it.”

Pitch studies me carefully for a second. He’s not convinced that this was my only comment on it, but the rest will have to wait until later. Since I don’t have a purse with me, I hang onto the book as we walk and enjoy the rest of the shops. But the nagging sensation that there’s something more to this book doesn’t go away.


	105. Chapter 105

When we get back to the hotel room, Pitch checks to see if the bugs have changed, and they haven’t, so he uses the scrambler to mask our conversation.

“Alright, what’s going on?” he asks as soon as everything’s clear.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and hold up the book. He takes it from me, leans back against the dresser, and flips through the pages.

“It wasn’t random chance that this is what I got,” I say to him after it’s clear that he hasn’t found the part that concerns me. “Check out the inside cover.”

He does what I say and turns to the front of the book. “’Q. L.’? What does this mean?”

“Q. L. stands for ‘Quintus Laurentinus,’ I assume,” I tell him. “But I don’t know what the numbers below it mean.”

Pitch looks up at me. I can see that he’s trying to contain his irritation. “Why the hell would Quintus want to interrupt us here?” he asks. “You sure that’s what it means?”

I shrug. “It’s a used copy of a book related to a series he had me read,” I explain. “And the initials are the same as his. I guess it could be coincidence, but it seems unlikely.”

He studies the string of numbers underneath the initials for several moments. I flop back down onto the bed and stare at the ceiling not certain why the hell Quintus would want to give me that book. Sure, I’m almost done with the third book of the trilogy, but if he just wanted to give me something else to read, why the weirdness? He could easily have had it sent to the hotel room or whatever, and no one would have given it a second thought.

Pitch comes over and sits down next to me.

“It’s a date,” he says. “A date and time. See this?” He holds the book above me and points to the first in the string of numbers. “That’s two days from now. And this part here is telling you the time.”

“How the hell did you figure that out?” I ask as I stare at the faint handwriting.

“It’s possible I’m wrong, but I don’t see what else it could mean, and the fact that he gave you this book and wrote an upcoming date in it is more realistic than other options,” he tells me as he closes the book and tosses it to my side.

“So a date and a time. I assume he wants me to meet him. But where?” I ask without really expecting much of an answer because it’s not like Pitch knows. I stare up at the ceiling as though it may give me a sign.

“Unless there’s any other clue we overlooked, I assume back at the bookstore,” he says. “That’s where you normally meet him, right?”

“Yes,” I answer. “But back in the Capitol. In his own bookstore. Obviously he doesn’t expect that.”

Pitch shrugs, then lays down next to me. “You’re not going alone,” he says.

I turn and look at him. He reads my expression carefully, picking it apart piece by piece. Thus far, I have met Quintus without Pitch on every occasion. Sometimes because Quintus requests it, other times because I seek him out. But each time I have been alone. I want to ask Pitch if he’s sure that he wants to go with me because I remember how much Quintus bothers him, but I don’t need to open my mouth to know that he’s damned sure. If I had paid attention during the wedding to what the officiant was saying, then I’d probably have heard something about the fact that Pitch and I aren’t supposed to go run off and meet weird Capitolite men by ourselves—unless the Capitol tells us to, off course; then that’s okay.

But I have no plans on ditching him. I’ve gotten used to visiting Quintus and I recognize that maybe I’m a little too comfortable with him now than I should be, but he still unnerves me. I’ll take Pitch along without complaint.

“I won’t,” I assure him.

The next morning, we eat breakfast on the little beachside yard we have. I’m surprised that it’s cold and foggy again. It’s almost uncomfortable, except that there is something refreshing about being out here. Like not even the Capitol can manipulate nature enough to make it sunny and perfect all the time. I dressed in my shorts and t-shirt, but I’ve pulled on a sweatshirt and hold the warm food on my lap to keep my legs from getting too cold.

“Wear good shoes—we’ll be doing some walking today,” Pitch says as he reaches the bottom of his dish. I lean over to scoop the last bits of egg and potato onto his plate so that I don’t have to finish my full meal.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Nowhere in particular,” he answers. “I just thought it would be nice to walk down the coast some and see what there is to see.”

That sounds pleasant enough. But that’s where the pleasantries end because a man and woman cross the expanse of sand that separates us from the water, and stop right on the other side of the fence. They could cross it if they want—it’s very short and easy to hop over—but they seem to respect us enough to keep their distance. Or maybe they just don’t want us attacking them.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman says. She has a sweet, round face with golden curls falling around her head. I can’t tell if it’s a wig or regular hair. The man is taller than her and he, too, has curls, but they’re hidden by the sweatshirt hood he has pulled up to keep the chill off his head. “May we speak with you?”

We can’t really say no, so Pitch says, “Sure. Come in.” He gestures towards the two lounge chairs that are free. The man and woman step over the fence and sit down. The wood groans under them, but neither seem bothered by it.

“I’m very sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but we wanted to talk with you about a request,” the man says. “My name is Norton McAfee, and this is my wife Avira. We couldn’t help but notice how beautiful your children are.”

Okay, but _what_? Are they here to ask us if they could buy them from us? His comment immediately sets me on edge, and I grasp my fork tightly. Nothing good will come of this conversation.

Pitch studies him carefully, not saying anything to the man’s words.

“My wife and I have always wanted a child, but I’m afraid that despite all scientific advancement, there’s nothing that will help me, well. . . . We won’t be having children because of me,” he says. Okay, yes, I don’t like where this is going. Both the man and the woman sit there poised and dainty in front of us, like they aren’t about to ask to kidnap Pitch’s kids. If that’s the case, are we allowed to tell them no or would that be the same as telling the Capitol no? But the man continues, “The doctors suggested that we find a sperm donor and we thought that, given how attractive your kids are, it would be a very wise decision to contact you.”

“No.” Pitch doesn’t bother being polite to them. Or maybe this is polite, I don’t know. The wind vanishes from me, and I glance at Pitch who stares the man down. “I am afraid that I can’t be a sperm donor.”

Both the man and woman look at him, eyes wide and mouth open like he just slapped them in the face.

“But Pitch—” the woman says. “It has always been my dream to be pregnant, and this is the only way.”

Pitch shakes his head. “They have a process for finding sperm donors in the Capitol,” he says. “I think they will help pair you up with a better candidate, and you’ll be able to find somebody who meets your needs.”

“I hear adoption is nice,” I say between gritted teeth. Pitch must be damned pissed because he doesn’t look at me to indicate I should shut up.

The couple are flabbergasted that I even mentioned adoption. Neither of them know whether to look at Pitch or me with their dumb expressions because now both of us are equally appalling in their eyes.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” the man says after a moment, and he and his wife stand up. They glance around them, no longer wanting to make eye contact with us. I’m sure they’re distraught to have their perfectly rational plan shot down the moment it left their mouths, but they can shove it up their asses. The man bids us good day, and the two of them step over the fence and hurry back down along the beach.

I can’t believe somebody just walked up to Pitch—strangers, no less—and asked him to be a sperm donor. Completely out of the blue. While he is on his honeymoon. In front of his new wife. What the hell is wrong with people?!

“They’re not going to make you, are they?” I ask when the couple become little specks in the distance.

Pitch draws in a deep breath. “Somebody tried once. It was denied,” he says.

“Because of genetics?” I ask. That was the excuse he gave for the vasectomy—he didn’t want to have children running around the Capitol not realizing they were related.

“That or because they need to protect their assets,” he says. I furrow my brow, not sure I follow, and he continues, “You learned about supply and demand in class, right? It’s like that. They limit the supply of a good—in this case, us victors—so that we are more valuable. If people get wind that they can get victors to donate sperm or eggs, then many people will want it and it’ll lower our value.”

“Well, that’s sick,” I say. I swallow hard and turn away from the beach to look at him.

“That’s why only the wealthy get me,” he continues. His face is serious, but it lacks the pain that is echoed in his words, like he’s so used to it that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. “Part of why they keep it quiet. So that word won’t get out because everyone will think that they can have access to myself and others like me. You notice that Caligula referred to the fact that I sleep around, but he never once mentioned it as a connection to any group of people or system? Not that he would say that I’m forced to, of course, but to have it known that there’s a process through which you can buy a victor for a night or week or month would mean that we’d no longer be valuable to the elite. We are something special they get for being who they are—not something that everyone else is allowed to have.”

“I’m sorry, Pitch,” I say quietly. I don’t know what else to say. What he told me makes sense, but it’s not something I really thought about in depth, at least not the whole economic aspect of it in which he’s reduced to nothing but a commodity. Obviously they don’t value him as a human, but to have it explained in such a detached, impersonal way is disgusting.

“Yeah, me too,” he says with a nod.

We sit in silence as though we still have to finish our meals, but my bowl is empty since I gave the remainder to Pitch, and he appears to have lost his appetite entirely. At last I stand up and say, “What about that walk?”


	106. Chapter 106

Pitch packs us backpacks with lunch and water and a picnic blanket (which is really just one of the nice blankets stored in the closet of the hotel room), and we head out for our walk. We stay up where the sand meets vegetation; it’s easier to get a foothold and we travel faster than if we were down closer to the waves. The air is chilly and we walk quickly to keep warm.

“The fog burns off in the late morning,” Pitch explains as I tuck my hands into my sleeves. I’ve been spoiled by the mild weather of the Capitol, and this chill is almost too much. It’s honestly not worse than home, especially with the promise of sunshine in the afternoon.

I enjoy the exercise. Walking has always been something that has calmed me down. When I can be around nature and get some mild exercise, things seem to mellow out around me. It’s part of the reason why I never bothered to get a driver’s license. Back before the Hunger Games, I lived close enough to the places I needed to go—school, the grocery store, the bus stop, friends’ houses, etc. And then after I won, it really kind of didn’t top the chart on things to do post-victory. My parents became even more protective of me, and they were willing to go to the store with me at a moment’s notice regardless of the time of day. And I’ll admit that sometimes I used my lack of a driver’s license as an excuse to spend time with Pitch, especially in the past year, since he was also willing to drive me where I needed to go. But sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons I won was because walking everywhere gave me endurance that other kids lacked, so when the fatigue set in, they couldn’t defend themselves or push themselves on farther.

We find ourselves near a small, two-lane highway. On one side the ocean disappears into the horizon. On the other side a stretch of coastal grasslands gives way to forests. We come across a paved path and follow this parallel with the road and the beach, leaving the resort behind us. On occasion, we see other people, but it’s rare. A few bicyclists, a couple of joggers, more people walking. They remind us that we’re not alone in the world despite the solitude. Cars and trucks drive by more frequently, but they pay us little heed.

Pitch stops after we’ve been walking for a couple of hours and studies the beach below us. Poorly-maintained stairs lead down to the sands. The beach comes to a sharp stop to the north where it meets a solid cliff jutting out into the water. But the sands are golden yellow and the water looks fresh and enticing. The fog has started to lift the slightest, and I have begun to sweat due to the exertion; it’s almost warm enough that I’m tempted to cool off in the waves.

“I want to check it out,” Pitch says, and he leads me towards the stairs. Each rickety step threatens to give way underneath me, but we make it to the bottom without issue. My boots sink into the sand; I don’t bother taking them off for the time being because I’m too focused on the strange little beach on which we have now found ourselves.

“This is pretty desolate,” I remark. Peaceful. Very comforting. But something about it makes me uneasy. Perhaps it’s the violence with which the waves smash against rocks that crop out from the water.

“Yeah, we shouldn’t try to swim here,” he says. “But I wanted to take a look.”

We watch as the waves crash against the side of the cliff. A far cry from the way they break smoothly on the beach, rolling back and forth across the sands. Gulls above our head call out, and some swoop down to land on the ocean. As we explore the beach, we find that there’s a passageway in the cliff big enough for us to climb through. On the other side, not too far away, we see more beach. So Pitch and I, explorers that we are, follow the hole through the cliff onto another beach. This one, like the one at the resort, is wide and open. A few people lounge around or play in the water, but it’s not crowded.

Pitch and I walk across the beach to the far end where we’re kind of by ourselves but not completely out of earshot of everyone else. Although neither of us have been to the ocean before this trip, we know that there are dangers associated with the waters. It’s the same way with lakes and pools and, well, many other things in life. If you think it might be dangerous, don’t go alone. Pitch tosses his backpack down on the ground away from the waves and I shrug off my bag and set it next to his.

“You want to go in, or do you want to wait until it gets warmer?” he asks.

Standing still has made me realize that the air isn’t quite as warm as I thought it was.

“Can we wait? I don’t want to freeze,” I say. 

“Sure,” he says. He leans over and unzips his bag to pull out the blanket, which he spreads out on the sand. We use the bags to pin down two corners before the breeze can take it away. Then we make ourselves comfortable. The blanket itself is quite nice—thick and padded, but also light and easy to fold—though I have to keep brushing sand off since every little movement tracks grains onto the fabric.

I lay down on the blanket and stare up into the sky. A few clouds drift far overhead, and birds call out to their friends.

“Can I speak freely here, Pitch?” I ask.

“Let’s just keep our voices low,” he says as he lays down next to me. “What’s wrong?”

“I hate people,” I say.

“Is this about earlier?” he asks.

“Yes. I can’t believe that they had the audacity to come up to you and ask that. Who the hell does those sorts of things?” Frustration is evident in my voice, and Pitch reaches out and takes one of my hands.

“I think it’s what happens when you have an entire society that has been told that this behavior is not just acceptable but also their right,” he says to me. “But I wouldn’t write off all of humanity—or even all of the Capitol—because of people like them. You know if things were reversed and District 7 had the privileges of the Capitol, there are many there who would be no better than what we witnessed today.”

As much as I’d like to think that all the cruel and rude people are contained within the boundaries of the Capitol, it’s not the case. Growing up, I met plenty of people who would show off or take advantage of others or whatever. If they were given the freedom to use others like the Capitolites use us, certainly some would take advantage of it.

“Part of the way they keep the Capitol citizens brainwashed,” I mutter.

“Probably,” he says. “Certain behaviors are overlooked—or even encouraged—because it gives the citizens something to focus on and make them feel like they’re better than the kids they kill. But that doesn’t mean that the Capitol always gives in to them. Look at Caecilia. Her mom probably threw a massive fit to anyone within earshot, but ultimately they let Caecilia stay with us through the wedding.”

“Because of the image they’re trying to maintain,” I say.

“Yes, but they could have had Faustina drop her off at various events and spun the story differently while still maintaining the image they wanted,” he says. “They just didn’t want Faustina involved, period, because she’s nuts. She might be allowed to be crazy in some situations, but the Capitol won’t cater to her every whim, not when it might hurt their plans.”

“She must’ve shat herself when she heard that Caecilia was staying with you.”

“I’d like to think so,” he says with a grin.

It’s strange to think of the Capitol censoring their own citizens even though I know that they did that very thing to Daphne. I’m so used to them letting everyone walk over us without us being able to say anything. But then again, Quintus did kill Martha for me, which is kind of the extreme form of censorship.

The breeze blows across us, but it’s warming now that the sun is out. I enjoy the beach. I wish there were more trees, but then it wouldn’t be what it is. And anyway, I’ll get trees when I go back home to District 7 soon enough.

Home. Where I get to explain to my parents that I wasn’t rushing into this marriage, at least not without a good reason. And then I have to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life. Every time I go to the Capitol, I look forward to coming home, but I find that the world around me has changed enough that it’s like I’m returning to a slightly different place. Everything’s the same, but there’s something very different about it that makes me look at things in a new light.

 _No, it’s not home that’s changed—it’s me_ , I realize. The Capitol changes me, for better or for worse, with every visit here. Home stays the same. The people stay the same. I’m the one who is different. And this time will be no exception. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, though it makes me a little melancholic to think how much I’ve changed, each time moving away further away from the old Juniper I once was. Only now, I’m not alone, am I? Pitch and I have managed to escape one of the traps laid out for victors: unsurmountable loneliness. The sensation that you can’t connect to other people because they won’t understand what you’ve gone through. Then you barricade yourself away from the others—from your parents, your old friends, you new classmates, the girls who live in the dorm—because you don’t know how to live normally again. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We’re victors, but we’re still human.

I study Pitch. His grey eyes, sunlight illuminating the little flecks of blue and brown, focus on a kite flying in the distance. I watch him for a few long seconds. What the hell would I do without him? He says that he’s lucky, but I think that I’m lucky, too. Or maybe we’re both complete morons because luck has nothing to do with this at all. We are victors, and we’re alive not because of luck but because of the things we did to survive. But I don’t want to just survive—I want to actually live. To find happiness. My heart thumps, and I almost crawl back from the ledge on which I’m standing and retreat into safety. But I have never gained anything from shrinking back from a risk.

“Pitch?” I say. He looks at me. His eyes study mine as he searches for my next words before I have a chance to say them. “I love you.”

He smiles.

“I love you, too,” he replies. His fingers touch my cheek and move down my jaw until he’s cupping my chin in his hand. He kisses me, but it’s different this time. I think that maybe—as stupid as it sounds—we’re finally on the same page, and that somehow makes it different. His lips are slow and gentle. We lay on the blanket together underneath the sun, and I am happy.

I thought it would be weird to tell him that I love him after I wanted to be friends and nothing more for so long. I feared that anything more would destroy what we had, but that’s not what happened. I don’t think that people who were “just friends” would be able to survive life in the Capitol and a public wedding and the sudden resurrection of a past almost forgotten. Maybe, I don’t know. But I do know that Pitch loves me and I love him and we’re still friends and I don’t care about much else.

At last we turn and look back up at the sky above us. A few clouds drift across, too thin and distant to cast even the slightest shadow. The bright sun is almost overbearing, and I wonder how people can survive in District 4 with such little shade to retreat to when the heat becomes intense.

“Did you bring sunscreen?” I ask him as my eyes drift to his arms where he’s drawn the sweatshirt sleeves up to his elbows.

“I hope so,” he answers, then he rolls over and grabs one of the bags. He searches through it before he finds the bottle. “You should wear some, too.”

“I’m fine,” I say as he squirts some in his hand and begins rubbing it on his skin. I wipe away a white streak that he missed and watch him finish the application. He tucks the tube away.

It’s grown pretty warm. Other people have started to go into the water now, and I sit up to watch them splash in the waves. Mostly families with small children, but I also see a few surfers out in the distance. They climb on their boards as a wave approaches and let it carry them back to the shore.

“You want to go in?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say. Yes, I do. I want to try to get some of the sun’s heat off my skin and feel the cool waters. “Are you coming?”

“Sure,” he says. So we remove our outer clothes until we’re just in our bathing suits and leave shirts and sweatshirts and shoes behind on the towel with our bags.

The water is cold, but Pitch drags me in regardless of my protests and tells me that this is the best way to get used to it. “You’re an asshole,” I mutter, but he just grins at me and tries not to shiver as a wave washes over us. We swim out as far as we dare—not even reaching the people surfing—but the lack of ground beneath my feet unnerves me and we return closer to shore.

This beach is much better than the one at the resort. The folks here don’t bother us. Sure, someone rides by on a bicycle and stares at us, but it’s more out of interest than intrusion, and he turns back to his path once his curiosity is satiated. Also knowing that the Capitol isn’t looming over us right here makes it easier to forget the things that have happened recently, and we can focus on just us. When we find ourselves closer to shore, we look for seashells (none found) and dig up a few tiny crustaceans before we let them scurry into the sand again. Then we return to the water and let the waves wash over us.

We take a break to get some water, and now that we’re out of the waves and on dry land, I realize how hungry I am. “We need food,” I say.

“We should find some shade first,” Pitch says. But of course there is none. So we pack up our stuff and I pull on my shorts, and Pitch puts on his shirt, and we head out away from the beach. As we walk, he says, “I wanted to check out the forest here. Will have plenty of shade.”

“What would you do without trees?” I tease him despite the fact that I’m yearning for the forest as well. The beach is nice, but the sun presses down on us. The trees offer shade—a break from everything.

This forest is different from the forests we have in District 7—even different from Capitol forests—yet it still somehow feels like home. Tall redwoods tower over us with smaller trees and undergrowth mixed in around them. Little critters chatter and birds cry out. The sounds of the ocean have vanished and been replaced with the noises of the forest. We walk for several minutes through the woods until Pitch comes to a stop, pulls out the blanket again, and lays it out in a nook shaded by two large trees. Because there is no sea breeze here, we don’t need to worry about weighing down the corners. I crouch down to wipe off the sand that still clings to the soft fabric.

Pitch plops down and I join him. After a moment, he pulls me closer and kisses me. His kisses move away from my mouth and down my neck as his hands slide across my skin. I know what he wants, and I want it, too. My fingers find the string that holds the back of my bathing suit top in place and I fumble with the knot. Pitch’s fingers find mine and he unties it. Then he moves up to the one behind my neck.

He pauses and looks at me. “You okay?” he asks but I’m already tugging at his shirt to pull it off him. He complies and slips it over his head. His lips return to mine as he unties the knot behind my neck and tosses the bathing suit top aside.

Neither of us cared about finding shade to eat our lunch. That was a ruse we both set up yet neither of us were willing to admit. Pitch’s hands travel around my body, his gentle touch cool against my warm skin, and I don’t want him to let go of me ever again. I don’t want to think about the past, and how I would be weirded out that our relationship has come to this. Nor do I want to think about the future and what it holds in store for us. All I want is here and now. I want Pitch, and I want him despite of everything he is and because of everything he is, and I don’t care about anything else. I empty my mind of thoughts and focus on his body against mine.


	107. Chapter 107

Pitch and I lay in the forest for an hour, maybe longer. He rests, eyes closed by not really asleep, and I drift in and out, never quite fully awake. The birds chatter above us and a breeze sweeps the tops of the trees. At some point, we have to start heading back. We’re a couple hours’ walk to the resort. Yet I don’t want to leave where I am. Pitch kisses me on the forehead and his fingers run gently down my side.

“We need to start walking,” he says.

“We haven’t even had lunch,” I protest. Any excuse to keep us out here for another few minutes.

He can’t argue against that. We can’t make the walk back on empty stomachs. Or we _can_ —we won the Hunger Games and both know what it’s like to skip a few meals—but it’s not smart. So we clean up and pull our clothes back on. Pitch runs a hand through my hair to pick out some leaves and flick them aside.

“We’ll eat fast,” he says. But we don’t. Once we get lunch out and unpacked, we take our time eating, and he can’t stop staring at me which makes me self-conscious.

“Why are you staring?” I ask.

“Because I love you,” he says.

“This is going to be a very long marriage if you can’t stop staring at me because you love me,” I tell him with irritation.

He laughs. “I’m sorry,” he says and he turns his attention back to his food. But every now and again I catch him glancing up at me.

When we finish eating, he helps me to my feet and we pack up all of the stuff we brought with us. We shoulder our backpacks and head out of the forest towards the road.

The trip home is quiet. The sun sinks into the western horizon and the ocean glimmers in the fading light. The night sky deepens, and the first hints of stars appear as we approach the resort. Exhaustion comes over me and I can barely make it up the steps to get to the hotel room. I toss my backpack onto the floor and sink into the bed. Pitch helps me undress and put on some clothes for sleeping, and then after he changes, he crawls into bed next to me.

Come the next morning, I feel pretty gross and need a shower. The salt and sweat and other things from yesterday cake my skin, and I wonder how the hell I managed to fall asleep feeling so disgusting. Pitch is still sleeping, so I build up a barricade of pillows around him. I don’t know why; it’s not like hasn’t seen everything already. Maybe it’s just because I hate whoever designed this shower.

Pitch is awake by the time I pull on my clothes. He starts taking down pillows before he pauses and looks over at me.

“Nice fort,” he says. He props himself up on his elbows and blinks a few times to chase away the sleep that still clings to his eyelids.

“Your turn,” I say as I grab up my book—the one I still haven’t finished reading—and take it out to the balcony. It’s cold, of course, and I have to return to drag a blanket off the bed (against Pitch’s protests since he says he’s still using it) and wrap it around myself. My book and I make ourselves comfortable despite the chill of the fog. Although the end of the book draws near, I can’t help but read quickly to absorb the final few chapters.

Pitch sits down next to me and pulls at the blanket until I give him enough so that he can wrap himself in it, too. Taking showers just to sit around in the fog with wet hair probably isn’t the smartest move, and we huddle together to stay warm.

“We have to go meet your friend in a couple of hours,” he says after a minute.

Right. Quintus. Almost forgot about him. Why all the weirdness and secrecy?

 _Maybe it’s part of how he entertains himself, like watching a bunch of nutcases babble about their ghost friends,_ I think. Figures that he would decide it would be fun to bother us on our honeymoon. Well, at any rate, I guess it gives us something to do today.

We almost skip breakfast because it’s too cold to move, but Pitch finally coaxes me back inside by promising me that we can see the sea lions again if we arrive to town early. So we order food in the room and eat quickly to allow ourselves time to get to the end of the pier before returning to the town to visit the bookstore. We try to pick up the room a bit so that when housekeeping comes to clean up, they aren’t faced with a complete disaster, and then we head out for the day.

As we walk to town, I watch the waves peak through gaps in the fog where the clouds have thinned enough to let the faintest glimpse of the ocean through. It would be easy to get lost out there until the sun burns off the fog in the late morning. I fear that the fog will be too thick and we won’t be able to see the sea lions, but when we peer over the edge of the railing at the end of the pier and down to the platform below there are a few sea lions, though not nearly as many as the other day.

“Maybe they know of some place warmer,” Pitch comments. But we still stand there and watch the couple that are here snort and stir in their sleep.

To live a life where you just get to sit around and sleep all day. . . .

We eventually tear ourselves away and wander back down the pier towards the town. There’s no rush to reach the bookstore; I don’t see the purpose in arriving early.

I no longer notice the fishy ocean smell that I did when I first arrived here, except for when the wind blows just right and I get a whiff of the odor. Does the entire ocean smell like this, or do we notice the odor only because we’re close to a fishing town that processes dead fish? Do the residents of District 4 even smell it at all anymore?

The boats bob up and down on the waves. Some are still lashed to the pier while others have been taken further out into the water and are little more than specks in the distance. We lean against a wooden railing and watch them move about. Pitch explains that those are private fishing vessels and the more commercial ones are too big for this area or are farther out at sea. He hasn’t seen one of the big ones, of course, but he seems pretty certain that they are massive and can get hundreds of feet long.

“You know a lot about this,” I comment.

“Hero was one trying to explain it all to me,” he says. “Her parents used to go out on the commercial boats for months at a time.”

I almost ask him what he knows about the ocean, and if they perhaps found land beyond the shining waters, but I’d be an idiot if I did. Besides, if it’s commercial, the Capitol is directly involved and they wouldn’t allow people to go off and explore.

“What was the purpose? I mean, what sort of fish did they bring in?” I ask.

“All different types, but I can’t remember. I think it depends on the season,” he says. “Many products that we wouldn’t expect use fish somehow. There’s the obvious, such as the fish we eat, or sometimes people use the leathers for clothing and purses, but then there’s weird stuff like fibers made from crab shells which are taken to District 8, oils and proteins which are taken to Districts 1 and 6, fertilizer from the unused portions which go to Districts 9 and 11.”

There’s trade between districts, but nobody ever goes much into the details unless you happen to work in that sort of business. Obviously lumber from District 7 goes to other parts of the country—something that we are to be proud of—but I wonder how many things we don’t think about end up being incorporated into other people’s manufacturing or research.

“There’s a lot more connection between the districts than I thought,” I comment.

“I don’t think the country would function right if we were all separate entities,” Pitch says.

_Can we function without the Capitol? If the entire city were to vanish, would we be able to conduct trade on our own?_

I run my fingers across the wooden railing on which I lean. If the Capitol were gone, we might be able to live without their presence. I’m sure that there would be other ways to rule a country rather than relying on one central source to tell us what to do. In school, they teach us that this is the way it must be because other methods have failed horribly in the past, but the curriculum is also controlled by those same people who hold the ruling power. Certainly we could come up with something better.

Pitch moves behind me, puts his arms around me, and whispers into my ear, “I can almost hear your thoughts, Juniper.”

“About how much I enjoy books?” I suggest as I lean back against him.

“Yes, of course,” he says. And then, more quietly, “Wipe the expression off your face.”

I grunt. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“You’re free to think things, and I never want you to believe otherwise,” he continues with careful words. “But you can’t let others know what’s going through your head.”

“Okay,” I say. Crap. Well, I thought I was doing pretty good by making it through interviews and conversations while not looking as murderous as I felt inside, but now I’m going to have to work on controlling my facial expressions all the damned time.

He kisses my head and says, “Let’s get going.”

We walk side-by-side back towards the town, and from there it’s a brief stroll to the bookstore. Neither of us say anything, and I struggle to keep my expression from betraying what’s going on in my head because no matter how much I know I shouldn’t be thinking these things, it’s there anyhow. A country without a Capitol is only a dream, but it’s one that I will have day and night if I can.

A bell chimes above the door as we walk into the bookstore. It’s quiet, but it’s also still morning. Pitch keeps an arm around me and tries to get me to go to the check-out counter where the employee had given us the book last time, but I say that I’d like to browse first. That’s what I always do when I meet Quintus, though of course Pitch doesn’t know that. He humors me and we stroll through the aisles. I pick up a book on occasion but force myself to put it back down. Then I realize that it’s so out of character for me that I need to grab at least a few.

“I’m not carrying them,” Pitch says as I hand him a couple of books. But after a second his resolve breaks and he takes them from me.

The employee from whom we bought the books the other day finds us and says, “It’s lovely to see you two back! Please, come with me.”

We follow after her without a second thought. Clearly Pitch was right about the time and place, and this isn’t mere coincidence. She leads us through a few narrow aisles, and then towards an unmarked door at the back of the shop. We slip through after her and find ourselves in a small hallway. And then through another door that says “Staff Only,” and we’re in a small reading room. And who is there but Quintus? He looks up from his book when he sees us.

“Oh, wonderful,” he says. His face bears minimal makeup, as though he left it all behind when he left the Capitol. His clothes are simple, though still elegant. But he’s still as damned pretty as ever. He motions towards two chairs. “Please, have a seat.”

Pitch’s jaw is clenched and he barely takes his eyes off Quintus. I am more at ease around the man, but the suspicious circumstances send a dozen warning signals firing off in my brain. We sit down in the chairs and wait for his first move.

“You’ll have to forgive me for the conditions here,” he says apologetically as he sets aside the book in his hand. “It is not my usual place and I was grateful the store owner accommodated me here.”

“And why are we here?” Pitch asks. He sits on edge, not willing to accept that Quintus isn’t going to rip us apart the first chance he gets. Quintus is a dangerous man, but I know that he’s also much more subtle than that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to kill Martha and get away with it.

Quintus smiles at him. “I wanted to give Juniper a book,” he says simply. “I think she’ll enjoy it—after she’s read the last one I gave her, that is. Which book are you on, Juniper?”

“Um, I still have to finish the third one in the trilogy but I’m almost done,” I tell him. I’m still moving through the series, but it’s more of an uneven skip than a solid trek through the books; I am able to gobble down a bunch at a time, only to have to go long stretches without.

“Okay then, do finish reading the prequel, and then you can read this new one,” he says.

“What the hell is with these books?” Pitch demands.

Quintus laughs lightly. “It’s just a series I’m fond of,” he says. “It used to be very popular hundreds of years ago; though it has been lost through time, it’s still one that people can appreciate.”

“So you brought us by secrecy into the back room of a bookstore to give me another book?” I ask carefully. “Why didn’t you just have them sent to the hotel room?”

“How are you enjoying your time in District 4, by the way?” he asks me. Another evasion of a question. So clearly he has a reason for meeting me and giving me the book personally, but he doesn’t actually want to tell me why.

I lean back in my chair. “It’s nice. Why?”

“No reason,” he says. “I was just asking. It’s your first time out of District 7—besides the Capitol, that is—correct?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Besides the victory tour.”

He nods.

“What are you getting at, Quintus?” Pitch demands.

Amusement plays on Quintus’ lips as he turns to Pitch. “Is her feistiness wearing off on you? You’re not nearly as understanding as you used to be,” he says. Pitch hesitates, and in that moment, Quintus continues, “You two are doing a good job playing the part they want you to play, but they won’t take their eyes off you this soon. And they certainly will never leave you alone if they have any reason to suspect that Juniper is influencing you in such a manner.

“Pitch, they will not give you full custody of your children, and you are not to fight it. Allow your lawyer to push back a little so it doesn’t look like you don’t care—they will give you an extra couple weeks with your children—but don’t do anything that would indicate that you are going against the final rulings. You can take them back to District 7 for the allotted time without worrying about their citizenship status as long as you follow this. If you don’t heed my advice, you will end up with full custody of the kids; they’ll figure out some reason or another for you to take them back to District 7 with you rather than staying in the Capitol and, well . . . I’ll leave that to your own imagination.”

I inhale. Then exhale. Inhale again. Just trying to keep oxygen flowing through me so that I can actually understand what Quintus just said. The kids will stay with their terrible mothers, and Pitch can’t do anything to obtain full custody. It’s a test to see how well he will behave, or if he has been influenced by me so much that he’ll fight for what he believes is right. In this case, however, fighting to free his kids from their unfortunate living conditions will only be their death sentence.

“Thank you,” he says after he processes the information for himself.

Because if Quintus is right, then the man has saved the kids’ lives by warning us of this “test.” They will be subjected to living with abusive or neglectful people, but at least they will not die in the arena.

Then Pitch says, “Nothing comes for free.”

“No, that is true,” the man answers. He sits back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. “I suppose you can say that someday in the future, I might need a favor returned. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t forget this.”

Pitch nods. Point taken.

“On a similar vein, Juniper: Enjoy your time in District 4. This will very likely be the only time they will let you step foot in another district besides District 7,” Quintus says as his eyes shift over towards me.

I frown. “I don’t get it. Why?”

“Because if you can influence one person so heavily, what’s to say you can’t influence more?” he says as he gestures vaguely in Pitch’s direction. “The fewer people you meet, the less dangerous you are. The less _educated_ you are about what the rest of the world is like.”

My chest burns and I stare down at the floor. So much for being able to explore the rest of the districts. They really are taking away every chance they can to let me learn, aren’t they? I still don’t understand why they see me as a threat.

_You volunteered for someone you barely knew. You showed the Capitol that their “game” was a joke. You won. You married another victor because you hate the things that the Capitol do to you. Of course they see you as a threat._

“Do you see that this will let up in the future?” Pitch asks.

Quintus shrugs. “Perhaps. But the future isn’t mine to know.”

Did they do this intentionally then? Taunt me with something like District 4 and then take it away from me for the rest of my life? Not allow me to be like Isolde and travel around to see the world?

“Now, I hope I don’t come across as rude in saying this, but you need to leave. It wouldn’t look good to be spending time in the back room of a bookstore while on your honeymoon, would it?” Quintus says. He reaches over towards a stack of books at his side and picks up the top one which he extends out to me. I take it from him and he says, “Finish the one you’re reading, and then the prequel. Otherwise this one will make no sense.”

“Thanks,” I say. Is that a code for something, or did he literally want to make sure I got the reading order right? Although I’m tempted to flip open the cover to search for another hidden message, I just hold the book in my hands and stand up. Pitch does the same, and we head towards the door.

“By the way,” Quintus adds. “It’s your honeymoon, and this is a bookstore—better make sure that you continue playing the part.”

I nod, and Pitch and I step out into the hallway. We take a breath to compose ourselves so that no one will suspect that we didn’t just get that sort of news dropped on us, and then we step back into the main store. It’s not until we reach the door that I realize that Pitch left behind the stack of books I had gathered. I don’t care. Pitch takes my hand and we pretend that we’re going to have a great rest of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: the smell of the ocean is not caused by fish but by another compound. I believe it is dimethylsulfide. Couldn't find a great source on it, though, and then I got bored.


	108. Chapter 108

The resort calls us to tell us that they have arranged a snorkeling expedition in the afternoon and they are inviting us to attend. We say yes, of course, and head back to the hotel. They provide us wet suits and gear, and then they load us—and about a dozen other people—onto a boat to take out into the snorkel area.

“I literally have no idea what we’re doing,” I say to Pitch. We sit on a bench on the small vessel. I clutch the snorkel and mask in my hands and try not to look at the great expanse of water surrounding us. My stomach aches, and I long to be back on land again; suddenly vanishing away from the coast—even if it’s still within visual distance—is too much for me.

Pitch puts his arm around me and tells me that we’re just going to try something new, and we only have to do it once if we don’t like it. Nice, but I still don’t want to be here right now. I glance around at the Capitolites sitting on the benches around us. Most of them are eager to begin and chatter between each other about how much fun this’ll be. One woman tells her friend that her sister did this when she was here last year and it was the highlight of the trip. A man tells his young child that all the kids at school will be jealous of his summer adventures; the child, on the other hand, looks up at his dad with uneasiness.

The instructor comes over to the group of us and explains how snorkeling works, how to breathe with the tube, and various safety precautions. He dumps the information on us with barely a pause, but then he answers questions at the end. I’ve already forgotten anything I was confused about, and I wonder if this is how I’m going to die. But then I realize that if the Capitolites sitting on this bench with Pitch and me can figure out how to not drown or get eaten by sharks, then we can, too. The instructor tells us to put on our swim fins and to get ready to get in the water. Then we line up and are pretty much thrown in before we can object.

Cold water hits me immediately and sucks the breath out of me. I can understand why they made us wear the wetsuits, but it’s not nearly enough to keep the chill at bay, especially on my exposed hands and face. Once we’re all in the water, we’re instructed to put on the snorkel and mask, and then we are to swim after the various guides to look at the water below us.

My heart pounds against my ribs and I have to remind myself to breathe even before I put my head beneath the water. Here we’re far enough out that there’s not the great waves like there were closer to the shore, but we still bob up and down with water around us. Dark blues and greens stretch out in all directions. I see the land still, but barely, and it’s too far away. I want my trees. I want land and forests and anything except the great expanse of ocean with God only knows what separating us from the sand many, many feet below. The cold chills me, but it’s fear that keeps me from moving after the designated guide.

Pitch reaches out and touches my arm, jarring me enough that I realize he’s still by my side. “Hey, you alright?” he asks.

I shake my head, but then say, “Yeah, just cold.”

“Stay with me. You’ll be fine,” he says. “Kick your legs—just a little—and we’ll go follow the guide.”

“Okay,” I say between chattering teeth.

We’re spread out so that there’s only about three or four of us per guide. Easier to keep us from drowning, I suppose. I doggy paddle over towards our guide who doesn’t seem to notice or care that it’s taken Pitch and me longer than the other two assigned to him to follow. But as soon as we get to the small group, I realize that I recognize the couple with the guide as the assholes who asked Pitch if he wanted to donate sperm. They smile and greet us when we swim over.

“It’s so great you could join us,” the woman, Avira, says. Her curly hair is drawn back into a bun sitting neatly on the top of her head, and she smiles happily at us. She looks at ease floating here in the ocean, her arms moving around her as she treads water. “I saw your name on the list to go today, and was so happy that we were going to have another chance to speak again. I hate leaving people on bad terms.”

Yeah, so do I. But what I hate more is having my friend—husband—asked by complete strangers to donate sperm. The cold sting of the water cools the anger that threatens to spill forth from my mouth.

The guide interrupts: “You guys know each other. Great. That always makes these excursions more fun. Now, you’re going to follow me here and. . . .” He begins to tell us that we’re supposed to lie on our stomachs and stick our faces in the water, but the momentary anger is replaced by the terror for what lies beneath me. What does this much water _look_ like? Can you actually see through it? What if I don’t like what I find?

Yeah, well, I’m not going to let these people see how much the water scares me. I embrace the anger and let it surge back up so that it will keep me stable even as the fear tries to pull me down. On the guide’s prompting, I slide the snorkel into place and roll onto my stomach. My eyes remain scrunched shut even after my face plunges into the cold water, and I focus first on breathing before I dare to will my eyelids open.

I almost throw up into my snorkel.

Beneath me is a great expanse of, well, I don’t know. It’s green and not quite murky, but also not fully visible. Shadows move beneath me, and kelp—so much kelp—sways with the current, the tips almost reaching my belly. I can’t see where it goes, but the stalks reach far down into the water’s depths. Fish flit about or float lazily through the leafy stalks. It almost seems like corn from District 9 swaying in a strong, but slow, wind. I keep my attention on the kelp so that I don’t think about the never-ending nothingness that extends all around us.

Something large bursts through the kelp about twenty feet below, and I immediately stick my head out of the water and begin to tread to keep afloat. But just moving my body so that the _thing_ isn’t in my line of sight doesn’t mean that it’s gone. It’s still there, somewhere below me, and it’s going to grab me at any moment and drag me down into the depths. I pull the snorkel out of my mouth and gasp for air. Around me, I see people floating face-down in the water like dead bodies bloated and rising to the surface. I pull of the mask and look up towards the sky hoping that the bright sunlight will snap some sense into me. This is just a normal vacation activity; it’s nothing I should be scared about, and I definitely do not want these people to see that I’m terrified.

After a minute, I’m about to convince myself to give it another try when Pitch floats over to me. “Sorry, we got separated for a bit there,” he says. “Are you doing okay?”

I glance around us to make sure that everyone else is absorbed in their fun times. Then I look back at Pitch. “No, I’m not,” I admit. “There’s something down below us.”

“It’s a sea lion,” he assures me. “They don’t eat people, so don’t worry about it. Hey. It’s a short session for beginners. We just have to get through this.”

“I know. But our company isn’t really helping matters,” I say. “I’m kind of wishing it was a shark and not a sea lion beneath us.”

He gives me a wry smile. “If only. Here, just hold my hand, and we won’t get separated,” he says. He fumbles through the water until his fingers find mine. “You ready?”

I nod and pull my mask and snorkel down with my free hand. Then we roll onto our stomachs and stare back into the water.

It’s not much better this time, but it’s good to know that Pitch is here and can verify whether something is going to eat us so that we can lead it in the general direction of the other couple. I see the dark shape again, and I keep my eyes on it until I can see that Pitch was right and it’s nothing more than a sea lion. Funny how something so large and fat can swim with ease. It moves gracefully as it dances between the kelp stalks and chases after its prey. We watch fish swim around, and at some point I see another mammal—far smaller than the sea lion—and I realize that it’s an otter. It disappears into the kelp before I can point it out to Pitch.

Our snorkeling is interrupted when two sets of flippers appear in our view and we have no choice but to look up out of the water and face their owners. Even before I lift my head, I know very well who it is.

“Can we help you?” Pitch asks them when he takes off his mask and snorkel. We tread water, our swim fins gently moving back and forth to stay afloat. His hand is still in mine, and I don’t let go.

“We were just hoping you had time to think about our discussion and reconsider,” the man says. Norton. That was his name. His blond curls are plastered to his head and he pants as he treads the water. But his eyes gleam with eagerness.

“I’m afraid that I have not reconsidered,” Pitch says. “I appreciate that you thought of me, but there are many other people better suited to be sperm donors in the Capitol.”

“There’s no need to be so humble,” Avira assures him. She has her mask and snorkel pulled up so that I can see her face. The straps dig into her cheeks and push them outward, making her face look even rounder and somehow more innocent. Or maybe it’s the fact that she might _actually_ think that Pitch is declining their request because of humility, not because he just really doesn’t want to.

Wait, is it possible that these people actually think that Pitch is honestly the best option, and they’re not harassing him because they want to put him in his place? Not that it matters when they’re behaving like this. . . .

 _Unless they are the sort who are so brainwashed that they think they can say whatever they want to him, even if they don’t mean any harm out of it,_ I think. They might not talk with their fellow Capitolites like this because they know that it’s wrong, but what if they genuinely think that it’s okay to talk with victors like this because we’re lesser district citizens?

It doesn’t excuse it. Somewhere inside them, they must realize how damned rude this is. Invasive. Cruel. I don’t care what adjective you use—this is not appropriate. We are people, not pets or property.

My legs grow tired with every kick I make to stay afloat, and I’m tempted to just put my face back down in the water and float away from them so that I don’t have to tolerate these people.

“Certainly you must ask yourself whether you’d be willing to ruin a couple’s future because you don’t want to help them out,” the man says.

I flip the snorkel out of my mouth before Pitch can stop me and say, “Can’t you guys make designer babies? Doesn’t the Capitol allow that? You can just make it have whatever qualities you want.”

The woman smiles kindly at me as though she appreciates my attempts but I’m too dumb to know what I’m talking about. She says, “I don’t think the present technology allows for that. Besides, we want to keep this as natural as possible.”

I’m about to roll my eyes so hard that they’ll enter an alternate dimension when our conversation is cut off by a sharp scream.

“SHARK!” someone cries out, and then there’s a flurry of panic as people scramble towards the boat. Norton and Avira are no exception. They launch away from us, arms and legs thrashing as they frantically leave us behind. Unlike the others, Pitch and I stay where we are. The fear of a shark somewhere beneath us freezes me in place, but it’s Pitch’s hand on mine that keeps me from succumbing to that fear. I hope the shark eats everyone as they try to return to apparent safety. They create a massive frenzy of flapping limbs, all shoving to climb the ladder back onto the boat.

“You don’t think there’s actually a shark, do you?” I ask.

“Yes, but it’s not a threat,” says Pitch rather calmly. I look at him with eyes wide, and he continues, “They’ve been stunning anything that comes near us.” He motions to a few guides that have floated further out. Their heads and necks are visible above the water line, but every now and again I see a long pole stick up from the surface.

How the hell do we all not get fried if they’re shooting electricity into the water?

“But don’t sharks come here to hunt?” I ask.

“They eat the sea lions and other things here, yes,” he confirms. He turns back to me. “Sorry, I didn’t tell you before. Didn’t want to freak you out, and the guides don’t want people to know that they’re stunning anything that might be a threat so I didn’t want to say anything the others would overhear.”

“I guess that would ruin the illusion of being out in nature if they’re scaring off the creatures that actually live here,” I comment with irritation.

He shrugs. “It’s a Capitol-run adventure. Got to let people live in ignorance,” he says. “Here, watch underwater. I think they’re going to stun another one.” His head disappears under the surface with only the top of the snorkel peeking out. I slip my snorkel back into place and dip into the water. True to his word, in the hazy distance, a large shark floats lazily towards our group. The beast could easily swallow any one of us in those massive jaws. The guide is already down deep in the water, stick in hand. As the shark approaches, he jabs the stick towards the creature which causes the shark to freeze. Then, before it can wake back up, the guide turns it around and pushes it away. I wonder how successful this method is and whether the same couple sharks keep trying to make it through or if they learn their lesson the first time.

We come back up to the surface, and I glance towards the boat where they’re loading the last of the other tourists back on board.

“I think it’s time to go,” I say.

Pitch acknowledges me with a nod, but I have to tug his hand before he moves. Slowly we make our way back to the boat, and the instructor hauls us inside like we’re too stupid to figure out how the ladder works. I guess when we didn’t rush back to the boat with the rest of the people, we must’ve come across as morons who don’t know how to defend themselves. I don’t know why, not when there was no actual threat.

As soon as we flop onto the bench, I rip off the mask and snorkel and peel the swim fins off. There’s no way in hell anyone’s getting me back out there. I’ve had my ocean fun, and never again will my feet leave dry land. People chatter about how exciting the snorkeling expedition was and how they had such a close call with the shark. _Yes,_ I want to say, _but not really because the shark was being sedated to make sure that it didn’t ruin your experience._

What would happen if these people actually had to do real work? What if the Capitol was dissolved, and these rich and pampered idiots had to be put into manual labor? How many of them would be able to survive working on a fishing vessel to supply the country with fish? How many would work in the tourism industry to make sure that others had a fun, shark-free experience like they do now? Would they even be able to adjust to the truth of how life really works?

When we return to the resort, I drag Pitch back to the hotel room.

“We’re not doing anything like that again,” I tell him as I close the door behind us. “I like the beach, but I hate the ocean.”

“It kind of looked like a forest,” he contemplates. “With all the kelp growing up like trees.”

“Nope, I don’t care,” I say. “Give me a real forest any day.”

A forest. And a hatchet. And then we won’t have to worry about any damned Capitolites trying to harvest Pitch’s sperm because the children he never wanted to have are beautiful and need to be duplicated to meet their superficial needs.

I stomp over to the shower where I peel off the wet suit, strip of my bathing suit, and climb in before bothering to test the water’s temperature. The cold water pelts my skin and raise goosebumps across my arms. I twist the knob to warm it up enough to keep my shivering at bay.

Pitch picks up my discarded clothes and tosses the bathing suit in the sink and takes the wetsuit out to dry on the balcony. When he returns, he knocks on the shower door even though I can see through it just fine and asks if he can join me.

“Fine, whatever,” I mutter. But despite my supposed indifference, when he comes in, I move against him so that he has to wrap his arms around me. The warm water rains down upon us, and for a second I remember something very similar a few weeks ago when I was too damned stunned to figure out how to function after that terrible interview.

“I think we’ve had enough adventure today,” he murmurs to me. “How about we stay in for the rest of the afternoon?”

“They’re so persistent,” I reply, my brain obviously in a different place. It’s like they decided to stalk us. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones who put our name on the snorkeling list to begin with since neither of us had done it. What did they plan on accomplishing? Did they really think that Pitch would change his mind? But what I fear is that they’re doing what the Capitol tends to do: make us do one thing in order to show us that they can make us do anything else. A threat to remind us who is in power.

“They’re not likely to get what they want,” he assures me. “That only works if they’re in the uppermost class. Maybe they can pull strings if they know somebody powerful enough, but we can’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Juniper, there are many things going on that we can stress about, but this isn’t one of them,” he says. “Either it will happen or it won’t. Let’s focus on the things that we may be able to control.”

“What the hell can we actually control at this point?” I hiss. “Everything’s happening around us, and it’s like we’re just _there_.”

He tilts my chin up so he can look at me. Water spatters down around us, but neither of give a shit that it’s smacks us in the face. I meet his eyes.

“We were able to get married. That was something we controlled, even if we didn’t get to choose the details,” he says. “We can control how we approach the situation with Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune. We may not be able to determine the outcome, but we can at least make sure the kids understand that we want what’s best for them.”

“Alright,” I say. Such stupid things we can control. Not that marrying Pitch is stupid, nor are the children, but it’s like we can move only within this well-defined box that the Capitol has set up for us. Anything beyond that is off limits, and they’ve taped the box shut to make sure that we can’t do a damned thing to see the world for ourselves.

I finish showering and leave Pitch to his own devices. While I dry off and search for something to wear, my brain races with thoughts: Quintus’ weirdness, Capitolites demanding things that aren’t theirs to ask for, Pitch’s children, the future. Everything jumbles together, and choosing clothes becomes an arduous task. I finally throw on a pair of underwear and one of Pitch’s t-shirts before I climb into our freshly-laundered sheets and close my eyes. Immediately weariness overtakes me, and the thoughts that burrowed through my brain only moments ago wash away in the sensation of waves that splash through my body. I drift in and out of sleep but it’s not until Pitch joins me in bed that I finally give up fighting and descend into dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm writing this, I'm thinking, "What a dumb way to keep sharks away." And then I started trying to come up with some detailed backstory of how these snorkeling adventures function. That could be a story on its own.


	109. Chapter 109

We spend the remainder of the honeymoon doing mundane things. No more adventures out into the ocean. They give us the option of going on a boat, but Pitch asks if we can go on the tide pool excursion instead. The resort staff appears pleased that we have taken initiative in deciding what we’re going to do, and then we spend an early morning looking at strange animals that cling to rocks when the tide pulls out. We eat at the variety of restaurants at the resort, and take more walks on the beach—both on and off resort property—and we return to the forest again just to make sure that we don’t forget the trees. Most of the Capitolites leave us alone, but every now and again we’re roped into conversation with them and we have to pretend that we care about whatever they tell us. I spend our downtime reading while Pitch watches the waves lap against the beach.

On the final night, Pitch and I take a blanket out onto the beach and wrap it around ourselves as we sit on the sand and watch the moonlight play across the ocean waves. Another group has created a bonfire, but they’re a ways off and have no desire to interfere with us. Every now and again, their drunken laughs float across the beach towards us, only to die down when the breeze changes directions.

“What happens after this?” I ask. I sit leaned against his chest and his arms are around me holding the blanket in place around the two of us.

“We go back to the Capitol to find out what happens with Caecilia, Pliny, and Neptune,” he says. Although the words are simple, a distinct heaviness weighs them down. By “find out what happens,” he means that we need to say goodbye to them. The Capitol will give us a few weeks each year, but other than that, their mothers will be in control of their lives, and I don’t know how eager they will be to allow Pitch visits if it’s not his designated time.

“Do you think Quintus was right that you shouldn’t fight to have full custody?” I ask him, my voice low. I watch the waves roll up on shore. At night with the moonlight glittering on the surface, they look so peaceful and calm. It’s easy to forget how they eagerly knock us down when we’re wading through them.

Pitch takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “I have no idea, but I don’t see what other choice we have,” he says. “If I didn’t listen to him and any of them were reaped. . . . I’d never forgive myself.”

To think of any of those kids in the arena makes my stomach ache. No child should have to go, but to have Pitch’s own children fight to the death. . . . And to have to mentor them. . . . Yeah, I don’t blame him for never being able to forgive himself for that. I suppose the only thing that makes accepting this easier is that Quintus has been correct about things in the past, so it doesn’t seem likely that he’d lead us astray and cause us to give up all for nothing.

Pitch takes a shaky breath, but his eyes remain out towards the dark horizon. But he’s in his mind right now, fighting conflicting thoughts that tell him to do completely different things.

“I’m here, Pitch,” I say. “With you. They can’t separate us.”

“No, they can’t,” he answers. “We won’t let them.”

I listen to his breathing and feel his heart beating against me. Strong. Steady. We won’t let the Capitol win. We won’t let them destroy us.

“I have to talk with my parents when we get back home,” I say. “I’ve . . . maybe not been fully honest with them. I thought that by not telling them everything, it would keep them safer and they wouldn’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ll go with you when you talk with them,” he promises. “I should. I don’t want your dad to murder me.”

My dad wouldn’t murder Pitch—he’s not that sort of person—but I don’t doubt that he’d have a few harsh words to say to him. I don’t think he has anything against Pitch personally, just that he’s not the right person for his daughter. Hearing that Pitch has a history of sleeping around as well as the fact that he has several illegitimate children has lead my dad to believe that Pitch is not worthy of me, but I hope that when we talk with him, he’ll be reasonable and understand why we made the decisions that we did. I don’t think I could bear it if my parents were angry or upset at me. Just like I couldn’t leave them in District 7 on a bad note, I can’t do the same with our future, either.

A particularly strong gust of wind comes over us, bringing with it that fishy, briny odor. Pitch tightens the blanket around me to keep the chill away.

“Which house are we going to live in?” I ask.

“Do you have a preference?”

“I think yours,” I say after a moment of thought. As much as I love my parents, it would be nice to have a little more space from them. Who knows what they might sign me up for if they see that I really don’t have anything to do to occupy my time now that school has ended? “Especially if the talk with my parents doesn’t go over well.”

“We could always connect the two houses,” he suggests. For a second, I think he’s serious. But obviously not because why the hell would we want to connect two mansions together?

“Block traffic across the street?” I ask.

“Oh, it could be raised. Like a bridge,” he says. “That way they can come bother us whenever they want, and we could go over there to eat.”

“A bridge? Don’t you think an underground tunnel would be more efficient?” I say.

Then we start trying to figure out the “best” way to connect the houses together without disturbing traffic, adding more and more elaborate and intricate features. It spins into a complete remodel of both houses, a silly and pointless conversation. We both know that a remodel of any type can never happen, even if it was something useful or aesthetically pleasing. That would be telling the Capitol that we want to change their property because it isn’t good enough for us, and we don’t dare say anything of that nature. We must embrace the beauty of the Capitol and the goodness it has bestowed upon us. But the banter is fun and we come up with stupid ideas that aren’t physically possible just for the hell of it.

“We’d make terrible architects,” Pitch comments after we add in a swimming pool that starts in the third story of his house and goes to the second story of my house.

“We might be able to design something in the Capitol,” I say. “After your beard tan line catches on, maybe they’ll be open to a catapult that launches between buildings. I say that if the harp doesn’t pan out, design could be my new victor talent.”

“Juniper, I know you don’t want to play the harp, but you might like it,” he says, suddenly turning serious. I feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look at him. Way to ruin a lighthearted moment.

“Yeah, sure,” I say with an eye roll. “I’m going to get somebody else to play it and say that I’m guiding them through spirit. It worked for the chainsaw carving.”

“You know, I used to play the piano many, many years ago,” he says.

“You . . . what?” I ask. I turn enough so that I can kind of look at him just to see if he’s bluffing me. But his face remains serious. “Why did you never tell me this?”

He shrugs. “Never came up in conversation,” he says. “It was when I was a kid. My mom’s friend was a teacher and said I had potential so she gave me lessons.”

“ _Did_ you have potential?” I ask, suddenly intrigued about this side of Pitch I’ve never known.

“Maybe, I don’t know,” he says. “I was okay. But then I broke my finger at work and it never quite healed right. I could still do my job and hold an axe and whatever else, but I lost the fine motor skills in that finger, which was needed for the piano. I probably could have figured it out, but it was more effort than it was worth.”

Curiosity takes me over and I draw his hands to me. They feel completely normal, and he clarifies, “They fixed it after the Hunger Games. It was this one.” He wiggles the fourth finger on his right hand.

“But you never played again?” I ask.

“Nah,” he answers. “Never wanted to. But I think I might take it up again. I mean, as long as you don’t mind that it’s going to sound terrible.”

I have literally never heard him state any interest in playing an instrument, nor did he ever mention it after all the hours I’ve spent playing. Obviously it wasn’t a priority for him. He wants to go back to playing the piano just so that I don’t have to play the harp alone; so I won’t be stuck inside for hours and hours picking at strings that I hate? Why would he do that when he could be in the forest like he normally likes?

 _Because he love you, you idiot,_ I think. _That’s the sort of shit people do when they love each other._

“I don’t think it’ll be terrible,” I say. I run my fingers over his as though it might be possible to discern the location of the break. “You can use my piano. We’ll bring it over to your house.”

“Our house,” he says.

“Right,” I say.

How many other things are there that I don’t know about Pitch? And how many things are there that he doesn’t know about me? Yeah, I can see very clearly how strange it is that we got married when we know so little about each other. Our existences revolve around the Hunger Games and everything that entails; that alone is enough to bring us together and give us common ground. But the unknown side of Pitch makes me wonder what else he’s good at, and where he’s been, and what he’s seen. If you were to take the Hunger Games away, who is he really?

And who am I really?

The next morning, we leave the resort behind. It was growing old, staying in this one place, yet I don’t want to leave knowing that I’ll likely never be back to District 4—or any other district besides my own—ever again. Still, we pack our things (again, pretty much just books and a couple souvenirs) and a car takes us to the train station.

As with the train trip we took to get out here, we take a short ride on one train before switching to another one. Neither of us say much about anything. I try to read my book (now almost finished with the prequel) but I keep getting distracted by the landscape. So much to look at within the district, and I drink it all in. Maybe one day the Capitol will let up on me and I’ll be able to travel, but in the meantime, I have to be content with what I have.

The Capitol is strangely quiet when we arrive, and at first I fear that something terrible has happened, but then I remember that normally my coming and going is within the confines of the Hunger Games and there’s much excitement in the atmosphere. Now things are back to daily life, whatever that may be, and people don’t care about arenas or weddings or anything of that sort. It’s kind of nice.

When we get back to my apartment, we find a whole bunch of _things_ filling our sitting room. It confuses me at first until I notice a piece of paper sitting on top of a cutting board that I don’t even own. Somebody has listed a bunch of items with names. I furrow my brow and stare at the paper.

“Wedding gifts,” Pitch says as he glances over my shoulder. “And somebody was kind enough to list who gave what.”

Not only that, but a stack of “thank you” cards sits next to it, already made out. There’s a note from Daphne stating that all we have to do is sign each card and put it in the designated envelope. That really makes things much easier. We wade through the sea of stuff and head back towards the bedroom, but not before almost tripping over a large, cylindrical bag lying on the ground. A punching bag.

I take off the note that’s taped on it: “We accidentally got you two of the same thing, so we had one shipped to your place in District 7. – Isolde, Hammer, Esther, and Maximus.”

Pitch laughs, but I just frown and follow him back into the bedroom.

This, fortunately, is just how we left it and there are no random wedding gifts strewn around everywhere. How strange to come back to this small, rather dark little room after being in the bright sunshine for so many days. It seems almost foreign, like it doesn’t belong to me at all. I dig through my dresser to find fresh clothes, and then I go to take a shower. When I return, Pitch is on the phone with the lawyer, so I sit down in the chair and open my book. I don’t read, however, because I’m too engrossed in what I can hear of the conversation.

“So what does that mean?” Pitch asks. Silence as he listens to the lawyer speak. After a minute, he then says, “That’s all? Is there any way we can get more time with them? . . . Yes, of course. Yes, I understand. Okay, thank you.”

When he hangs up the phone, he turns to me and says, “I have not been granted full custody, but they decided that I could have a month with them every year—either a full month at once or broken up into smaller increments. The lawyer is looking into whether he can get them to allow a couple more weeks.”

Just what Quintus said. I swallow hard and lower the book.

“What was the reason?” I ask.

“They don’t want to disturb their lifestyles too much,” Pitch says. “They say that their mothers provide stability, and too much time away from school will be detrimental to their education.”

Oh, sweet irony. So clearly this was ruled for political reasons and not for the wellbeing of the children, not with Faustina randomly pulling Caecilia out of class at her whim. And now the girl would only be able to escape from her insane mom one month out of every year.

 _Better than being reaped,_ I tell myself. My brain drifts to other thoughts. . . . What would happen if we trained her? Secretly, though, so no one would know. And then if she got reaped, she could win and then she wouldn’t have to live with her deranged mom ever again. _What the hell, Juniper? No kid should have to go to the Hunger Games, even if they’re trained and have a chance to win. And besides, the gamemakers could easily off her for the simple reason of being Pitch’s daughter._

Pitch sinks down at the edge of the bed, and I leave my spot in the armchair to join him.

“The details are still being worked out, and we have to figure out with their mothers when the kids will be able to visit,” he says. “I’d rather not disturb their school, but I also don’t want to be distracted with the Hunger Games during the summer.”

“Maybe over winter break?” I suggest. “Do they have that here?”

“Yes,” he says. “The kids might like to see District 7 in the snow. . . .”

But I doubt that their mothers would want to send them away for Christmas. Oh, maybe Faustina would, if it gets her some free “babysitting” so she can go to a party. Unless she thinks that it’ll benefit either Caecilia or Pitch, in which case she won’t let Caecilia go at all. How stupidly complicated this all is!

Pitch tells me that we’ll get more updates in the morning. For the rest of the evening, we do nothing of great importance. We take a walk to a local park, spend time lounging around the apartment, and flick through television stations to try to find something worthwhile. We don’t say it, but neither of us can get our minds off the kids and how much they’re getting screwed over by a conflict that isn’t even theirs.


	110. Chapter 110

The next morning, the lawyer calls to tell us that Pitch now has six weeks of custody for the three children each year, but their mothers would like to spend the rest of the summer with them. However, he is allowed to go say goodbye to them before we leave for District 7 tomorrow.

There’s nothing I can say to make Pitch feel better about this situation. It’s not like either of us really _wanted_ full custody of these children or to be parents or anything like that, but the sheer injustice of it all burns within me. Caecilia will remain with her verbally abusive mother who pulls her out of school on a whim and thrusts her into the care of her friends or strangers when the girl ceases to have meaning for her. Pliny and Neptune will live with their parents who hate each other more than they love their children. None of the kids will have a happy upbringing. The decisions made on who these kids live with were not with the best interest of the children in mind but with the best way to make sure that Pitch stays in line; as a result, all three kids will suffer. Sure, Pitch and I might not be the best people to raise children, but could we be any worse than the assholes with whom they currently live?

I admit I feel guilty for being grateful that the kids won’t be with us full time. Nothing in this circumstance is “fair”—not how the kids are being treated, not the conditions under which they were originally conceived, not their worthless mothers—but I’m grateful that I’m not required to raise these kids, and I feel like a monster for even thinking that, especially when I see the pained expression on Pitch’s face as he sits quietly in the back of the cab and stares out the window into the city streets. His eyes are glazed over, and he doesn’t see the buildings and banners and colorful lights; no, he is focused only on how fucked up everything is and how he can do absolutely nothing to save his children. He tries to save people; that’s who he is, and it doesn’t matter if it’s his tributes or victors he mentored or whoever, but the cruelest truth of all is the fact that he cannot do anything for his own flesh and blood. No decision he makes at this point will make anything better. He can only mitigate the damage inflicted upon these children.

We arrive at Pliny and Neptune’s house which thankfully no longer has press swarming the streets. The cab drops us off, and we walk to the front door and knock. At first I wonder if they’re going to leave us standing here now that they’ve “won” and have their kids back, but Tatiana did agree to have us over when Pitch called earlier. I shift uneasily and adjust the satchel’s strap over my shoulder. The door finally opens, and an avox brings us inside. Once more, we’re lead to the sitting room where we sit down and wait briefly.

Tatiana comes in from the kitchen and takes the armchair across from our couch. She has put herself together since the last time we saw her, with styled hair and crisp wardrobe. She smiles sweetly at us.

“It’s wonderful to see you two again,” she says, which is complete bullshit. “I really hope you enjoyed your honeymoon.”

“We did, thank you,” Pitch says politely. I try not to remember that Tatiana tried to get her hands on Pitch against his will mere days before the wedding. Judging by the way Pitch clenches his jaw as he watches her, I doubt that he’s forgotten this episode, either.

“Plinius and I have mended our marriage and we have decided to stay together for the kids,” she says proudly. She moves her hand slightly to draw our attention to the large ring on her finger. Some sort of token of their commitment to each other, no doubt. What did he do, buy her a big ring to get her to shut up? She doesn’t say anything more on it once she notices that both of us see it, but she continues, “I’m so glad we could reach an agreement about the children. I think they’re very happy with the way things have turned out, and they’re glad to have met you.”

“And I am glad to have met them, too,” he says. “I would like to say goodbye to them, please.”

“They will be down in a minute,” she assures him. She sits up straight and looks from one of us to the other. “It will be hard to be without them, even for a few weeks out of the year.”

“You will have them the other forty-six weeks out of the year,” I say sharply. “I think you can let them spend time with Pitch every now and again.”

“Juniper, when you have your own children, you’ll understand,” she says somewhat dreamily. “It’s hard for a mother to let go, even for a few weeks.”

I want to remind her that there are plenty of mothers who have to “let go” of their kids for the rest of their damned lives in order to satiate the bloodlust of people like her, but I clamp my lips shut and glare at her instead. The last thing I want is to stir up trouble when things balance so precariously.

She turns to Pitch and says, “It’s been nice to see you again. You’re just as handsome as you were so many years ago. If you ever need a break—marriage can be stressful, and don’t I know it—please keep me in mind.”

Eww. What the hell? I grimace at her comment and glare at her.

“Tatiana. Where are Pliny and Neptune?” Pitch answers, his face stern and eyes fixed solid on her.

She sighs and then snaps her fingers. An avox rushes in from the kitchen and comes to her side. 

“Get the children,” she says to the girl, and the avox nods and hurries up the stairs. Then the woman turns back to us and watches us with a small smile. It’s pretty creepy, but I just sit next to Pitch and stare straight back at her to make sure she knows that she can’t freak me out just with a few loose words and that oddly satisfied twist of her lips.

The children come down the stairs a minute later. Neptune bounds over towards us and immediately starts demanding to know about the trip and what District 4 was like and what we did and whether we saw any sharks and all sorts of questions. Pliny follows after her at a more leisurely pace and sits down in the armchair. Pitch promises to answer all of Neptune’s questions, but I see him glance uneasily at Tatiana who has made no move to leave.

So I look up at the woman and say, “Can you please excuse us?”

She studies me for a moment, her eyes sweeping across me. It seems like she might decline, but she eventually stands up and goes towards the stairs. I watch her carefully to make sure that she clears the stairs and the landing entirely before I return my attention to Pitch who is trying to answer all of Neptune’s questions. Pliny occasionally chimes in, too, and we give them as much detail as we can. Then Pitch pulls out a souvenir for each of them, which just makes Neptune go practically nuts. She clasps the little mirror tucked into the seashell that Pitch chose for her and stares at her reflection.

“Thank you so much!” she says, and then she wraps her arms around his neck. “You’re my favorite father.”

_Oh, geeze kid—don’t let your real dad hear that one._

Pitch hugs her back and tells her that he’s going to miss her. She finally plops down on the couch next to him, and Pitch addresses them both.

“I’m sure your mother told you that you’ll be staying with her for most of the time, right?” he asks. They both nod. Pliny’s face is solemn, but Neptune’s eyes glisten. She sniffles and wipes her eyes with her shirt sleeve. “Juniper and I will work it out with her when you two can come to stay with us. The priority is to make sure that we’re not interrupting your education more than we need to. But we’re happy to have you with us whenever you can come.”

“So we actually get to go to District 7?” Pliny asks.

“Is that going to bother you?” Pitch inquires. “If it does, we can see about us coming here to the Capitol.”

Pliny’s eyes turn to the carpet and he shuffles his socked feet across the fibers.

“No, it’s one of my favorite districts,” he says.

So Pitch was right. The kid’s initial reaction was because he was so damned confused that he didn’t know how to handle it, and he wasn’t going to show his real emotions in a time like that.

Pitch gives them both his and my phone numbers so that they can call us if they ever need anything. He tells them that he wants to know about their lives—their friends, the places they go, the things they learn in school, their hobbies, if they ever need to vent. Then it’s time to say goodbye, and we stand up and hug each of the kids.

“Oh, wait,” I say. “I forgot this. This is yours.” I reach into my satchel and remove the mermaid statue from the wedding and hand it to Pliny. He takes it and looks at it for a second before he mumbles a thank you.

By this time, Tatiana is walking down the stairs. She comes and stops at the door, and I know that it’s our cue to leave. We say goodbye to the kids again, and then to Tatiana, before we step outside into the summer sun. I tell myself that they will be okay and that they’re resilient kids. But does resiliency really matter when your own parents care for you so little?

Our next stop is to say goodbye to Caecilia. Both Pitch and I know this won’t go over well so we brace ourselves as we climb out of the car and prepare to step into the minefield.

This is the first time I’ve seen where Caecilia lives. It’s the penthouse of a massive apartment building further downtown. Everything about it reeks of unnecessary extravagance. We step into the apartment complex lobby where marble floors and gilded ceilings accented with gold paints ensure that we know that this place belongs to the wealthy. An avox escorts us to the elevator and steps inside after us. We tell him who we’re visiting, and he presses the button to make sure that we get there. And then he waits until we step out before he follows and knocks on the door for us.

Another avox answers the door, bows, and holds it open for us to come inside. The first avox bows and returns to the elevator. They have a system going on here, and each avox has its own particular area, I’d wager. What a mind-numbingly boring existence to merely open doors and escort people up and down an elevator. But there are worse tasks for avoxes, and perhaps it keeps him far enough away that he doesn’t need to worry about Faustina’s fickle temper.

The new avox takes us to a spacious room whose floor-to-ceiling windows offer a view of the entire city. We sit down on one of two long couches. A glass coffee table separates the two pieces of furniture. Useless decorations create a fragile tower of glass and gold in the center of the table; each level holds a small tan candle that matches the rug underneath our feet. From here, one can see the dining room table, a long rectangular piece that sits twelve chairs. And the kitchen is also fully visible. Clean, tidy—almost like nobody uses it at all.

Faustina sweeps in before I have a chance to admire too much more, Caecilia trailing in her wake. The woman sits on the couch opposite ours and draws Caecilia down next to her. Her hands linger on the girl’s waist.

“I hope you had a good honeymoon,” the woman says, echoing Tatiana’s greetings. But the way Faustina says it makes it clear that something terrible is to follow, a “but” attached to it that will wreck the remainder of the day.

“We did, thank you,” Pitch answers politely because there’s no way to avoid whatever trap we’ve just walked into. I glance at Caecilia, whose face is somewhat difficult to read and once again layered with makeup that’s far too heavy for an eleven-year-old girl.

“It’s unfortunate that you didn’t want to spend time with Caecilia,” she says.

Right, okay, here we go.

“It’s a honeymoon, Faustina,” Pitch says. His voice strains to remain calm. No use getting upset at her because it’ll just trigger her crazy button earlier than it needs to be. “The Capitol arranged it for us, and it was a very nice trip. I’m glad that Caecilia was able to spend time with us before the wedding, but I’m sure that she was happy to be back home.”

“Hmph,” the woman says, turning up her nose at us. “And then you decide that you only want to spend a mere _six weeks_ with her every year.”

Pitch draws in a breath. “That was what was decided by the lawyers,” he answers evenly. I know that he yearns to say that he’d rather spend far more than six weeks with the girl, but that would be dumb. Not when it would be going against the final ruling—and who’s to say that Faustina wouldn’t go and tell this to somebody who could actually do some damage?

“Right, blame it on the lawyers,” Faustina huffs. “It’s not like you’re just _abandoning_ your daughter again or anything.”

Rather than addressing Faustina—because at this point there really is no purpose if she’s going to spin the truth to fit her own reality—Pitch turns to his daughter. “Caecilia, the lawyers decided that you would spend the majority of your time with your mother so as to not disrupt your school schedule,” he tells her. Caecilia drinks in what he says, her wide eyes never once leaving him. “As much as I’d like to spend more time with you than that, they believe that it’s in your best interest to—”

“Oh, don’t you _dare_ lie to my daughter!” Faustina snaps at him. “You found yourself a new wife and would rather spend your time fucking her than taking care of your child. And who would have thought otherwise after it turns out you’ve stuck your—”

“That is enough,” Pitch cuts her off, his voice firm. He stares her down and when she’s momentarily silenced, he continues, “You are not to talk like that in front of _our_ daughter, nor are you to twist the truth to your benefit. I am following what has been decided because it is in Caecilia’s best interest—not yours, not mine, not Juniper’s, not anyone else’s.”

“You’re such a disgusting pig, and here you are pretending to be a noble knight,” the woman spits at him. “I think it’s better for Caecilia to know what a waste of space her father is. There’s no point sheltering her from that.”

“How about you let her judge that for herself rather than filling her head with bullshit?” Pitch responds sharply. He clenches his jaw and braces himself for the next verbal blow.

“How many children do you have, Pitch?” she asks, her anger momentarily subsiding but the threats beneath the words still present. “How many women have you told that you love them—just like me—only to knock them up and abandon them?”

I glance at Caecilia. The girl has closed herself off; she’s still physically present, but her expression has flattened and her eyes have grown dull. This is the life she’s condemned to live because of some intricate network of actions and punishments that she will never truly understand. We could have freed her from this, but that would only lead her to her grave. Instead she will grow up thinking that her father did not fight hard enough for her and left her at the mercy of a mentally unbalanced mother whose priority is not her child but her own self-image.

We victors aren’t the only ones damned to nightmares and eternal punishment. The Capitol is willing to punish their own citizens—even children—if it means keeping everything balanced.

_If Faustina were to die, would things be different?_

Shit, I can’t have these thoughts in my head. I blink and try to clear them away, but the idea that I could simply end everyone’s suffering in one quick movement is so enticing that I struggle to keep myself rooted in reality. There would be no way I could pull it off.

But Quintus. . . . He killed Martha who was a threat to other powerful people. Couldn’t something unfortunate happen to Faustina? Isn’t she a threat to the Capitol’s image?

Then again, would that mean that Caecilia would have to be a citizen of District 7?

_We could keep her in a boarding school in the Capitol. . . ._

“You really have no business around children,” Faustina is saying to Pitch. “I really worry about Juniper and what she’s walking into. Are you going to abandon her as soon as you get her pregnant? Or are you going to—”

“Hey, Faustina,” I cut in sharply. She ignores me and goes on ranting, so I reach out and grab the centerpiece from the table. It’s heavier than I gave it credit for, and I enjoy the weight in my hands knowing that it’s going to bring me the briefest flicker of excitement. Before anyone can stop me, I smash it down on the ground just where the rug ends and the marble floor begins. Glass and bits of metal shatter and fragment, and I might even have chipped the flooring. I listen to the sound of the chaos, and in the destruction, the world around me grows quieter.

Faustina gasps. “What the hell are you—”

“I’ll break more shit unless you listen to me,” I say, my hands already reaching for the coffee table. I grasp the edge and lift it up enough to let her know that I’m serious and will upend this table if she doesn’t shut her face. Faustina’s mouth opens but before she can get another word out, I continue, “Pitch wants to speak with his daughter. Alone. Can you kindly fuck off?”

“I will not leave that madman with my child!” she hisses.

“Great, well, I’m going to go see if this kitchen is actually functional or if it’s just a prop to entertain guests,” I say, setting the table back into place. I stand up, leaving a stunned Pitch sitting on the couch. My shoes crunch on glass and metal, and I cross the expanse of open room until I’m in the kitchen.

To my relief, Faustina hurries after me, swearing and telling me that I’m nothing but a no-good whore who will open her legs to anyone who blah blah blah. I begin fiddling around in the kitchen while she screams at me and curses, but the more she rants, the more I start messing with shit. I turn the stove on and off, then I open up the refrigerator to find a bit of food, all artistically arranged and none of it good enough to make any actual meals. The cupboards beneath the counters are all empty. The ones above have things like plates and dishes. Each one is polished and clean, but I doubt they ever get used.

When I lean down to open a drawer, Faustina grabs me by the hair and jerks me around. She crouches down next to me, her fingers still entwined in my hair, and forces me to look her in the eyes.

“You think you can do anything you want and you can walk over us, but you’re nothing but district trash,” she says. “You think that by winning the Hunger Games, you’re as good as the rest of us, but you’re nothing.”

“Is that what you told Pitch when you forced him into your bed?” I ask her. My anger flares, and I use it for balance as I stare her down. “Or did you think that he was a pretty good prize at the time?”

Her fingers tighten in my hair and I wince as she pulls at the roots. But the pain only makes my senses sharper.

“You don’t know anything about what happened,” she snarls.

“Well, I know that you raped him, but I’m sure you don’t tell Caecilia that, do you?” I say. “Probably one of those things that is best that a kid doesn’t know.”

“Oh, don’t let him fill your head with lies,” she says, jerking my head a bit. I wince again, and she continues, “He enjoyed himself just fine and was completely devastated when I ended it.”

Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. There’s nothing further from reality she could have said, nothing that would make me doubt her sanity more. The amount of pain she inflicted on that man cannot be so easily written off. The anger fills my nerves, stretching out from my chest to the very tips of my extremities. But she won’t get the best of me. I won’t allow myself to freak out on her because it will only give her the ammunition she needs to justify her cruelty.

“And by ‘ended it’, you mean that you stopped your monthly subscription?”

“You are such a self-centered little bitch. I will rip you to pieces right here and now,” she says, her voice low. And I know that she’ll try if she could, but she wouldn’t be successful. You don’t threaten to take on a victor in a fight like that. “But I won’t do that because if I harm a single hair on your head, I know that Pitch will no longer have any interest in you. That’s how superficial he is, but I’m sure you’ll figure that out in time.”

“You have a second kitchen somewhere,” I say. She blinks at me, thrown off by the sudden turn of conversation. I reach up and pry her hand from my hair, then run my fingers against my sore scalp. “You have this kitchen to impress people, but you don’t cook. Somewhere avoxes do it for you. That’s a neat trick, honestly.”

And it matches everything else she does in life. Everything she is and everything she does is just for show. She worries about her appearances so much that she just can’t say, “I don’t know how to cook” or “I don’t like to cook” when her guests come over. No, she has to put on a show that she’s as capable in the kitchen as anyone else, even if the meals are brought in from an entirely different room.

“Mind your own business,” she says.

“How many other things here are false?” I ask her. “Do you pretend to be a useful member of society, too, and just have somebody else do it for you? Just like you pawn your kid off on other people to have them do the parenting while you claim what a wonderful mother you are.”

Anger and hatred flash through Faustina’s eyes. She reaches up on the counter behind her, and I move out of the way just in time for the knife that she swipes down. I kick her hand and she yelps as the blade is knocked out of her grasp and clatters to the ground.

This lunatic actually tried to kill me? What the hell?!

I hold my ground, ready to kick her again if she goes for the knife. She clutches the injured wrist in her free hand and says, “You two deserve each other. Such selfish, disgusting people.”

Whenever she speaks, it’s like she’s looking into a mirror and insulting whoever she sees in the reflection. She knows so very little about us, and yet she’s using vulgar or insensitive descriptors to throw in our faces like it’s really going to mean something. Call me selfish, call me disgusting—neither of those really apply, at least not in this context, and it means nothing to me. And yet she’s the one who only thinks of herself and who willingly mistreats Pitch and Caecilia. I watch her face as it twists from the contorted anger into something normal—pleasant, even—and she stands up and dusts herself off. Getting ready to go back to the others and tell them some lie about me, no doubt. They can’t see from here what happens behind this counter, so who’s to say she isn’t wrong?

I see how she does it. She’s attractive. Kind. The sort of person who draws people toward her. But then once they get to know her, she turns on them. She oscillates between a beautiful, in control, pleasant woman and the demon with the ability to spit forth venom so rank that it burns anyone who gets near. I don’t understand _why_ she does it, but I can see that the damage she inflicts is insidious.

She steps away from me and walks back to the others, each step calm and controlled. I straighten out my hair, fix the collar on my blouse, and stand up. Pitch and Caecilia watch as Faustina sits down on the couch once more. If they weren’t done talking, then they are now. Faustina watches them coolly, waiting for the first moment to tear them apart. She’ll wait until they’re mid-sentence, maybe; perhaps she’ll cut them off when they go to say their goodbyes. Whatever she’ll do, she’ll make it as traumatic as possible.

“Caecilia, Juniper and I have to leave,” he says to her. His face is serious, but not without compassion. It’s one thing to leave Pliny and Neptune in the hands of rubbish parents; it’s another thing to leave Caecilia with someone who is capable of doing such deep damage that she’ll never know what is truth and what is fiction.

The girl nods. “Thank you for visiting,” she says politely. Like this is an acquaintance rather than her own father.

Caecilia stands up and comes over to Pitch to give him a hug, but Faustina clears her throat and says, “That will be all, Caecilia. You are dismissed.”

The girl turns and looks at her mother for a long second, then back to her father. Pitch looks puzzled—hurt—and neither he nor Caecilia move. But Faustina stands up, and grabs the girl’s shoulder. She leads her away a few feet before giving her a firm nudge to make it very clear that she is no longer welcomed in this conversation. Pitch stands up as though he’s going to protest, but before the words can leave his mouth, Caecilia turns, rushes past her mom, and throws herself at him. He catches her and they hold each other for several long seconds before the girl finally pulls herself away.

“Bye,” she says, and then Faustina grabs her by the upper arm and hauls her away from him, making sure that she gets to the hallway that leads further into the penthouse before she releases her. She watches the girl walk down the hallway, and then she turns around and returns to us.

“You are no longer welcome here,” she says to Pitch, seemingly forgetting me. But it doesn’t matter. If we can’t be with Caecilia, then there’s nothing else left for us.

Pitch nods and says, “C’mon, Juniper.”

Faustina doesn’t bother to see us out. She waves to the avox who takes us to the door and opens it for us. Another reminder that we mean nothing to the woman. The avox closes the door behind us, and we press the button to call the elevator.

I hold Pitch’s hand on the cab ride back to my apartment. Such a vile woman Faustina is. How the hell can she treat people like that? If even the Capitol has to censor her, why do they let her get away with abusing her kid?

We make the ride back to the apartment in near silence. As the cab navigates the city streets, Pitch asks, “Are we making the right decision?” I have no answer for him.


	111. Chapter 111

We’re going home tomorrow. All we need to do is survive the night, and then we’ll be free of the Capitol. Or as free as we can be. When we get back to the apartment, I plop down on the couch and start signing our name to the stack of “thank you” notes Daphne left behind. I have already assigned Pitch the job of sealing all of the envelopes, but he’s been distracted with another phone call. After a few minutes, he emerges from the room.

“Juniper?” he says as he sits down on the couch next to me. He wipes his palms on the legs of his pants and waits until I’m looking at him before he continues. “I have a date tonight.”

A . . . date.

A “client.” And only mere days after getting married. Bris told him that he’d have another one after he returned, but so soon? The train just pulled in yesterday morning! My chest aches, and I set down the pen and note card in my hand before I have a chance to destroy them in my shaking fists.

Pitch is mine. Not somebody else’s. They can’t take him from me.

 _But they will. You knew that they would do it, and you wanted to marry him knowing that he would never be fully “yours.” Stop being an idiot._ And, anyway, I remind myself, Pitch doesn’t “belong” to me any more than he belongs to anyone else.

“They’re . . . not wasting any time here,” I finally manage.

“I have my duties, and I need to uphold them,” he says.

I nod. “Yeah, okay,” I say.

It feels as though somebody has broken each and every one of my ribs and lit them on fire. The pain within me is so immense that I can barely breathe. Pitch reaches over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and his hand lingers for a moment before he strokes my cheek. His other hand takes mine, and he holds my trembling fingers in his solid grasp. This is another part of life to him. He had a nice break from it for awhile, but now duty calls and he must return to the people who _deserve_ his affection. But to think of what they will be doing to him. . . .

Tears roll down my cheeks before I can stop them. I pull away from Pitch so I can stamp them out with the hem of my sweatshirt. I _knew_ this. There’s no reason I should be crying. It’s not going to do either one of us any damned good—hell, it’ll just make things worse for Pitch.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I force myself to meet his eyes.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

He pulls me into his arms, and I hold myself together, but just barely. Only because I know that I agreed to this condition before we married, and I cannot make it more difficult for Pitch to survive this. At some point, I’ll be completely numb whenever he leaves me for the night, but right now it’s a fresh and terrible pain and anger that rip away inside me. I focus on his breathing and his heart beat and his body odor which isn’t entirely unpleasant but is just _him_ , and I cling to anything that reminds me that Pitch is here with me. He will only be leaving physically. “Only.” It’s an unsettling truth, but I knew it. I knew it. And he told me that it would bother me, but I told him that I didn’t care. I’m an idiot. Of course I care. I would still marry him anyhow, but this hurts so fucking bad that I don’t even know how to express it.

He murmurs to me, assuring me that everything will be fine and that he’ll be back as soon as he can and that he still loves me. I cling to him and wonder why the hell any government can allow this to happen to their citizens. No, no, not “allow.” Encourage. Facilitate. This entire thing happens because they give him freely to the people who supposedly deserve his company. The remaining tears in my eyes dry as I focus on the anger that courses through me and wonder if maybe—just maybe—we really can live without the Capitol watching over us and controlling our very lives. It would be possible. I don’t know how it would come to be, but I’m sure that it could happen.

I pull away from Pitch so that I can look at him. He holds my head between his hands and studies me carefully. I think he’s going to warn me about keeping my thoughts to myself and not allowing them to show on my face, but he says nothing as he takes in whatever he can glean from my expression. Then he kisses me and I melt into him as I absorb his warmth. We only part when an alarm beeps on his phone and he says that he has to get ready to leave.

I try to organize the wedding gifts so I can figure out which ones to take and what to leave behind, or at very least get them out of the sitting room since they take up so much space. With the other three bedrooms now vacated, we have just as much room as ever to store things away. But as I haul stuff around the apartment, I can’t tear my mind away from Pitch. Every second slogs by, and I can’t help wondering what foul human has him in his bed. In the end, I give up and slump on the couch with a book. By now I am on the most recent book Quintus has given me—no secret notes written on the inside cover—and it’s pretty dense. But the challenge is what I need to keep me occupied, and I pour my full attention to it.

It’s nearly two AM when Pitch returns, and I almost forgot that he left at all. But the moment I hear the key turn in the lock, I hone in on the noise. I keep my eyes on my book as he steps inside and closes the door behind him, but once he turns around, I drop the pretense and lower the book. I don’t know how to proceed from here. Do I comfort him like I want to, or is that too much for him? Do I let him have his space and risk coming across as too cold? I watch him and try to assess his state and determine what my next move should be.

“Sorry I was out later than I anticipated,” he says heavily. He kicks off his shoes and nudges them towards the side of the door. “I am going to go take a shower. . . . I’ll see you in bed?”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” I tell him. He nods and moves off to the hallway and out of eyesight. I listen for the sound of running water, and when I assume he’s in the shower, I force myself to stand up and turn out the lights.

I’m exhausted. So many things happening, so many changes. But despite that, when I climb into bed, sleep is the last thing on my mind. I skim through the current chapter of the book knowing that I’ll have to go back and re-read it, but I can’t even invest more than three brain cells into focusing on the pages. Finally I give up, set the book aside, and turn off the light. I listen to the thrum of the shower followed by the abrupt absence of noise that indicates that Pitch has turned off the water. A couple minutes pass, and the bathroom door cracks open, filling the room with soft light. The light vanishes with a snap, and then the mattress dips as Pitch joins me in bed.

“You okay?” he asks as he adjust the blankets around us.

“You’re asking _me_ that?” I whisper.

He kisses me.

“I’m fine,” he says.

I huff. “Right, okay,” I say. But I slide my arm around him.

He flinches and I pull my hand away.

“What’s wrong?” I demand.

“Nothing,” he says calmly.

I reach forward my hand and gingerly press on his side where my arm had brushed his skin moments before. He winces under my fingers.

“That is definitely not nothing,” I say. What the hell have they done to him?

“Don’t worry about it, Juniper,” he says. But I’m already leaning over to twist the knob on the lamp. We blink with the sudden light, but then I move the blankets and pull back his shirt to find a large bruise developing on his ribs.

. . . I don’t even know what to say about this.

They hit him. Who the hell does that sort of stuff? _Why_ would somebody do that?

I hate them all. Every single one of them who has ever put their hands on him without his permission. They’re all abhorrent freaks, and none of them deserve the fancy lifestyle they live with themselves and their families safe from the Hunger Games.

“Did they break anything?” I demand.

“No,” he says, tugging at his shirt to pull it down over the bruise. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit. Are there others?” I start to reach for his shirt again, but he grabs my wrist.

“Juniper,” he says sternly. Once he gets my attention, he continues, “I’m fine. I have been doing this almost as long as you have been alive. Trust me—I’m fine.”

I frown at him. “That does little to assure me,” I snap. “They can’t just beat you and—”

“Yes. Yes, they _can_ , Juniper,” he warns, his voice low. He releases my hand and sits up. Yes they can. Again, I’m being dumb. Dumb and rude and invasive. Pitch doesn’t need me lecturing him about this shit; he knows just as well as I do how messed up it is, and yet neither of us can do a damned thing about it.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I drop my eyes away, the anger abating with his words. “I should have respected your privacy.”

“And I should have realized that you’d be so concerned,” he says. He strokes my cheek, and I look back at him. “We can sleep now, and tomorrow morning we’ll see if there are any issues. But I suspect that I’m fine.”

I can’t tell if he’s just humoring me on this, but he kisses me and then reaches out to turn off the light once more. We lay back down and Pitch holds me close to him. I’m careful not to touch his ribs again and let him dictate where my hands and arms should be so I don’t bump any other bruises.

“They normally don’t,” he whispers so quietly that at first I’m not sure he said anything at all.

“Hmm?” I ask.

“I mean that they normally don’t hit me,” he says. “Everybody likes their own thing, but normally not like _that_. I think this was, um, intentionally timed.”

“You’re saying that you think that they wanted you to be hit?” I ask.

“Yes,” he replies. “So that you would see the bruises and be upset.”

“It worked,” I grumble. Another reminder from the Capitol about who is in power. That Pitch and I are not free from them. Honestly, the reminders grow tedious, and I find that now they do little to pacify me. If anything, they make me hate the Capitol more and more as the anger within me rises. “When do you have to go back?”

“No set date,” he says. “They’ll call me when I’m needed.”

He adjusts his arms around me so that he can see my face. Now that our eyes grow used to the darkness, I can make out his features well enough. I reach up and run my fingers through his beard. It had grown a bit since he didn’t tend to it much while we were in District 4, but he trimmed it up before going out on his “date.” There’s a strange feeling inside me, something unfamiliar intertwined with the anger, and I try to sort it out. Pitch’s eyes study me, but I keep myself focused on my fingers in his beard. Then I realize that this feeling is jealousy. It startles me to know that I’m feeling that at all, and a surge of panic jolts through me. I can’t be _jealous_ of these people! They’re terrible, and Pitch doesn’t like them at all. Why the hell would that make me jealous?

 _Because they have priority over him,_ I think. _It doesn’t matter what you want—all that matters is what they want._ _They can demand things of him and beat him and whatever else, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. You wish that they couldn’t take him away from you._

_You wish you had their power so that you could put them in their place._

No, I don’t care about power. I’m just so damned _angry_ that Pitch has to suffer because the Capitol citizens chose him to die. And it’s even worse now that I’ve been with Pitch and I know what he’s like; they don’t “deserve” that. They haven’t earned his touch or his kisses. It’s not their right or privilege or anything of the sort. That’s Pitch’s to give away, and he chooses to give this to me. I try to let the fact that he chose me—not them—bring me a modicum of peace, but it doesn’t because he shouldn’t be in this position at all.

“It’s okay. We’ll go back home and we don’t have to think about it,” he assures me.

Just like when we were floating out in the waters of District 4 and I saw the shadow of the sea lion before I realized what it was. By lifting my head from the water, it “disappeared.” The moment it was no longer in my line of sight, I felt relief and a false sense of security, if only for a second, but it didn’t mean that the threat wasn’t below me. Now Pitch is telling me that I can do the same thing—that I can lift my head out of the water—and pretend that whatever dangers lurk below us don’t exist at all.

“That doesn’t mean that it isn’t there,” I tell him.

That’s how the Capitol functions, though. If you don’t look at it, you don’t think about how dysfunctional it is. Just as Quintus said. Once you begin to understand, the flaws become apparent, and you can’t unsee them.

“I love you, Juniper, and I want to enjoy our lives together, not worry about things we can’t change,” he says evenly.

In other words, _Shut up_. But Pitch wouldn’t say that to me, so he finds a nicer way to convey the same sentiment. I nod, and he kisses me on the forehead. I lean into him and close my eyes. In a matter of hours, we will be on the train back to District 7, and then we have to deal with trying to adjust to life back in victor village. But how long will he be with me before he’s called back to the Capitol to resume his duties?

It disturbs me how casual he is about all this. Maybe it’s tearing him up inside, I don’t know. I don’t see how it couldn’t. But the calmness with which he handles the situation unnerves me. The fact that he tries to reassure me that everything is okay by telling me that he’s been doing this for so many years only makes matters worse. Year after year of pleasing people has jaded him. I suppose it only makes sense; if I had to do anything for years—good or bad—I’d eventually get used to it, too. But the ache in my chest is enough to tell me how wrong it is because this isn’t something that he should be able to brush off so easily.

We both knew that this is part of his reality, and I have to be strong for him regardless of how I feel.

My fingers twist into the fabric of his shirt as I listen to his breathing, and eventually I’m able to calm myself down enough to match his breaths.


	112. Chapter 112

We arrive in District 7 late at night. Neither Pitch nor I slept much, if at all, as we dozed on the couch of the train car. When the train approaches the station, we straighten ourselves up and put on fresh clothes. Once again, the only thing we have with us are my satchel with my books and a small bag with the souvenirs we bought for my parents. Everything else here belongs to the Capitol, and I’m more than happy to leave it behind.

The train comes to a stop, and we wait in the narrow hallway to be told that it’s time to leave. Pitch takes my hand as we press against the wall and try to keep out of the way of a few employees who pass us by.

We are finally home, and yet I have a peculiar sensation that I’ve left something behind.

The children—they are now a part of our lives, and yet they remain within the confines of the Capitol, just as they will be for most of their lives. It’s a connection we have now with the Capitol, one that will never be severed. Another way that the Capitol has bound us to them.

_No. We’re required to be a part of the Hunger Games, but we’re NOT required to be part of the kids’ lives. That’s an option—that’s our choice._

I squeeze Pitch’s fingers and he squeezes mine back.

The door to the car opens, and we step down onto a platform illuminated with bright lights. I blink, but I don’t have to look for my parents before they are in front of us. They embrace me and tell me how happy they are to have me back, and then they turn to Pitch and hug him and welcome to the family. Warmth fills me. Not fire, not anger. Happiness as I watch my parents tell Pitch that they’re glad that he’s back, too, and they hope we’ve had a good honeymoon.

It’s late, and there are few other people on the platform. We are about to start walking when I notice another couple on the platform waiting for us: Willow Elowen and her older sister stand back and off to the side—waiting for me just as they have the past two years. Why does this girl whose life I saved once upon a time insist on greeting me whenever I return to the district? They come over to me and embrace me, and I thank them for being here. They tell me that they’re so happy for Pitch and me. It’s more than we’ve ever said to each other in the past. But our exchange is brief, and they watch as Pitch, my parents, and I leave the platform for the parking lot.

We climb into my parents’ car. Our home isn’t too far from here, and my parents ask questions about how the trip went and what we did in District 4. But as we approach home, my dad assures us that we will “talk more in the morning.” A foreboding comment, but one that we must face sooner or later, and it wouldn’t be wise to postpone it longer than needed.

The car stops in front of Pitch’s house, and the engine idles as Dad puts it in park.

“You two get some rest,” Mom says as she turns back to look at us. “I imagine you’re exhausted.”

“Thanks for picking us up,” Pitch says.

“Yeah, sorry it’s so late,” I say.

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Mom assures me.

Dad turns around and says to Pitch, “Don’t forget to carry Juniper through the doorway.”

“Absolutely not,” I reply as I open the car door and bounce out before my parents can suggest any more dumb traditions. Not that I’m certain if he’s entirely serious about that one.

The clouds hide the moon, but even in the darkness, I find my way up the driveway and towards the porch before Pitch. He lingers for a few moments longer talking with my parents before he follows me up to the front door. I have a key, but I wait for him to catch up before I stick it in the lock and turn it.

“Do you want me to carry you—”

“Try it and I’ll punch you,” I say before he can get the words out of his mouth. He grins at me, but I pretend I don’t notice and step inside the mansion. I flick on the lights.

Everything is just as it was before. Quiet. Dark, even with the lamplight. A place of solitude and contemplation. A place to think about everything you’ve done, and all the things you’ll never be able to do.

I close the door behind Pitch and lock it.

We wander through the house, sometimes together and sometimes alone, taking time to reacquaint ourselves with the familiar structure. Pitch’s house is very similar to mine, though with some differences in floorplan. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which house we’re in since the architectural style is pretty similar, and I’ll wander into the wrong place on accident. Now, however, it’s been so long since we’ve been in either house that it doesn’t matter much. 

We find our way up to Pitch’s bedroom. I toss my satchel full of books on the ground near the floor lamp and find my pajamas in one of the dresser drawers. I guess it’s good that I’ve always kept some clothing over here at Pitch’s place. I’ll have to move more over tomorrow so I’m not stuck with the few items I’ve accumulated. I strip off my clothes and slip on the pajamas as Pitch uses the scrambler to search for any new bugs (none) and goes to use the restroom. I dig my book out of the satchel and climb into bed. Pitch joins me a few minutes later.

“It’s late—go to sleep,” he tells me as he curls up against me.

“Hang on. Just a couple more minutes,” I promise. I’m finally getting the hang of this book, and after slogging through so many strange names and places, I’m being pulled into the pages quite easily now.

“I’ll be keeping track,” he says as he closes his eyes. His hand moves to my waist and he starts playing with the drawstring on my pajama pants. I know he’s trying to distract me so that I’ll give in and turn out the light, but he’s not going to win against a book. When it’s clear that his tactics aren’t working, he moves his hand up under my shirt to run his fingers across my stomach.

He almost wins—I’m flipping through the remainder of the chapter and am just about to close the book—when I realize that the next page is stiff and doesn’t turn as easily as the others. I furrow my brow and lift the book up so I can get a better look in the light.

“What’s wrong?” Pitch asks, his hand suddenly motionless on my stomach. He cranes his neck to watch me turn the page. When I do, I realize that there’s something stuck to the page itself. Very subtle—I never noticed it when I flipped through the book from start to finish—and it’s firmly adhered to the paper. It takes a second before I’m able to peel it off. I set the book aside and look at the thin piece of paper in my hand.

“It says something on it,” Pitch notes, and I turn it over to find writing and, weirdly enough, a picture of Quintus.

“’On Monday, July 10th, Year 142, Quintus Laurentinus, bookstore owner, passed away at the age of 32,’” I read. “Wait, _what_?!”

Pitch grabs the paper from me and reads it through. His lips move, but no sounds come out of his mouth.

“This is an obituary. . . .” he says.

My heart thumps. Quintus is dead? How the hell? My eyes scan through the words, but they don’t seem to make sense. There’s nothing that reveals anything novel, just that he was educated through the university, owned a bookstore, and was well-loved by the community. They don’t say anything about how he died, or why, or whether he had any family left behind, or anything like that. Nothing to tell us who he really is between the unnecessary platitudes.

“Juniper . . . this is dated in the future,” Pitch says as he points to the date.

“It must be an error,” I say.

We reread the paper, but neither of us know what the hell it even means. Why would it be in the book he gave me?

 _He wanted me to have it for some reason._ He doesn’t care about the contents of the book; making sure that I got the final book in the series wasn’t something super important—at least, it wasn’t as important as what he was actually telling me—but now that I have this strange message in front of me, I don’t know what to make of it. And neither does Pitch. This is far more complex than the last message he left for us, and no matter how hard we stare at the paper, we can’t figure out why the hell he would want me to have a future obituary.

“Do you think he’s actually going to die?” I whisper as I take one last look at the paper before tucking it back into the book.

“I have no idea,” Pitch admits. He turns off the light and I try to calm my racing brain, even if only for a few seconds. He makes himself comfortable next to me and says, “I’ll check on this later.”

“I could call him,” I say. I have his phone number, and he’s called and messaged me several times, so it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for us to communicate, though perhaps a little strange since I’m no longer in the Capitol with him.

“Let’s think about it carefully first,” he says. “Tomorrow, not tonight. Tonight we have to get some sleep.”

Yes, yes, of course. Can’t sit up all night contemplating a piece of paper we don’t understand. But if this was fake, why the hell would he give me his obituary? Is there some sort of secret message in it? If I held it up to the light at the right angle, would it reveal hidden words? Or is he trying to tell us that he’s going to die soon?

 _Maybe he wasn’t quite as supported as he thought he was in killing Martha,_ I think. And then a horrible (and very selfish) thought comes through my head: if he does die, who will protect me?

I draw in a quick breath to try to steady out my heart.

Pitch notices and says, “We need to sleep on it because we can’t do anything about it tonight. There’s a lot we have to do tomorrow, so we need to get our rest.”

“Sorry if I’m having trouble sleeping after finding out that some guy who helped us numerous times might be dead in a few days,” I mutter.

“Just follow my breathing,” Pitch says, and he takes a breath and lets it out slowly. After a few times, I force myself to try matching it, and eventually figure it out. I’m able to let my body relax enough that my brain is required to follow suit, and slowly I feel sleep pulling me away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that we're actually near the end of the story and I'm not trying to make things more complicated. Well, wait. I am making things more complicated. Oh well.


	113. Chapter 113

We sleep in later than normal and Pitch finds some pancake mix that just needs water since he used up the eggs and milk before going to the Capitol so they wouldn’t go to waste. We eat breakfast, clean up, and get ready to go talk with my parents. Neither of us mentions the book or the obituary we found last night. As confusing as that message was, there’s more pressing issues at hand.

There have been very few times in life that I’ve ever needed to “talk” with my parents. As in a big, formal-style talking to ask permission or to seek forgiveness or whatever was needed. But now I know that it’s something we must do in order to clear things up, and I hate knowing that the things I say—the things that need to be said—may hurt them very much. The things that have happened the past month and a half have hurt them, and it could have been avoided, or at least better controlled, had I been honest with them from the beginning.

Although we didn’t tell my parents in advance when we were coming over, they seem to expect us anyhow.

“You don’t have to knock on your own door, Juniper,” Mom tells me when she opens up the door for us.

“I didn’t want to catch you unaware,” I say with a shrug. She’s probably right. Technically this house is mine, too, and I’m not certain how the hell I’m supposed to handle the whole having two places to live situation.

We walk back to the den with the great bookcase full of literature of all kinds—some of which is mine and some of which came with the house—and we take the couch adjacent to my parents’. Despite the many rooms in this mansion, this one is our favorite. Maybe because it’s small and homey. Maybe because the couches were from our old house and hold years’ of memories of books and television and board games—a life before the Hunger Games took over. Two large windows allow in morning light, but the curtains are closed in the illusion of privacy. Various knickknacks and decorations sit on the tables and shelves. Mom’s favorite vase holds fresh flowers. Dad’s collection of books signed by the authors is proudly displayed on the shelves near the windows.

Mom sits next to Dad, and for a few seconds, nobody says anything. This room is free from bugs, but that doesn’t make it any easier to speak right now. We try to pretend the silence is because we’re getting comfortable on the couches—shifting around, moving pillows—but at last we have to face the truth that we must have a conversation that we all know we need to have but nobody knows where to begin. To make matters even more challenging, there’s no way that my parents can anticipate all the crap I’m going to lay on them, not when they think that we’re here solely to justify our marriage. Mom and Dad look at Pitch and me; I think they’re giving us the option to speak first and explain ourselves. Everything that’s going on revolves around _me_ , and I know that I am the one who needs to initiate conversation. Still, it’s damned hard to drag them into our drama.

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t upfront with you about Pitch and me,” I begin. Pitch takes my hand and squeezes it. I appreciate the gesture, and I continue, “I haven’t been honest with you guys about many things that have happened since I won the Hunger Games. . . .”

My parents listen in silence as I explain that what they see on television is only a fraction of what we experience in reality. All the moving parts behind the scenes keep the Hunger Games running, and we victors are only a tool that gets used to make sure that everything functions without issue. They make us stand on the platform at the reaping and attend interviews and become attached to our tributes because it is part of the punishment we received for winning the Hunger Games. Then we’re bound to these tributes for their final days, lingering somewhere between levels of Hell as we drift in a tortured existence and wait for whatever fate befalls these kids. And when they are finally brutally murdered, we can only think that somehow— _somehow_ —we could have done something better and saved them.

“I still dream about Rosa,” I admit to them. “It’s been a year, and I can’t get away from her. I only knew her a couple of weeks, and yet she’s still here. . . .”

What I say is killing my parents right now. Their faces are twisted in pain, and they do little to hide the sorrow in their large brown eyes. But they’re either stunned to silence or giving me plenty of time to speak; it’s hard to tell which.

“We have to go to parties to watch the Hunger Games,” I continue. “They have big parties for the bloodbath, and we all have to gather around and watch the beginning of the Hunger Games knowing that at any moment our tributes may be killed. . . . All the while, we’re surrounded by drunk and excited Capitolites who are placing bets and cheering for one kid to kill another. We’re not allowed to break down or to show how upset we are because that would reflect poorly on our tributes. . . .”

I leave off the part about being preyed upon by various Capitol citizens. That would be too much for my parents to bear. I might have realized that keeping them in the dark hurt them, but I know that revealing too much of the truth would be far too much to place on them.

“Then they interview us. The only way we can get out of interviews is if our tributes are dying,” I tell them. “Otherwise they make us sit there and answer questions about them, and, well, you’ve seen them all. And they’ve interviewed you, too, when I was in the arena, so I guess I don’t need to tell you too much about how terrible that is. But once the tribute dies, you barely get any time to pull yourself together before they’re shoving a camera in your face. They don’t treat the kids as, well, _kids_. And they don’t give us time to mourn them or anything like that. We’re just expected to function as normal.

“And then there are more parties when it’s time for the Hunger Games to finish. To celebrate the end and to watch the final tributes kill each other. Live. While having fun and drinking and reminiscing about favorite deaths or how many kills each tribute has. It’s all of them, too. Even the kids are taught that this is completely acceptable. And no one cares that it bothers us, and we’re not supposed to show them that it does.”

My voice trails off, and I let the words I’ve spoken sink in. It might be too much, I don’t know. Even though the actual truth is worse than this, I might have given them too much to digest right now.

“You knew this and you went back to the Capitol this year?” Mom says. Her voice cracks when she speaks, and her hands are clutched together in her lap, fingers tightly interlocked.

I nod. “I couldn’t leave Pitch. Knowing what it’s like, I couldn’t leave him,” I explain. My parents look at him, waiting for him to say something. Before they can even think that he condoned this, I add, “He didn’t want me to go, for the same reasons as you guys.”

My parents can’t possibly understand why I’d willingly walking into this hell. I’ve painted a very disturbing picture of what we endure during our time in the Capitol, and surely they must think I’m foolish to have run back into that for the sake of some man. But, again, they don’t understand our relationship, and I’m not sure how to properly convey that it wasn’t merely attraction that drove me to make the decision I did.

I take a breath and try anyhow.

“The nightmares haven’t gotten better. I know you guys know that I have them, and I told you that they got better, but I lied. They’re still here. . . .” I say. I’m acutely aware how dry my mouth is, but I press forward because I’m afraid that if I stop for more than a moment, I’ll lose all momentum and drift away. “The school nurse. . . . She made me take a sedative every night so that I wouldn’t wake up the other girls in the dorm. But that didn’t make the nightmares go away. Sometimes I’d stay awake all night so that I didn’t have to face them. I’m . . . well, my grades were terrible. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m passing my classes only because the professors gave me ample opportunity to make up late work or re-do work I’d failed. I had no friends because I just couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —interact with anyone. I’m sorry, but Fern and Robin are entirely made up. I just didn’t want you to worry about me. . . .

“I, um . . . I tried to kill a girl once. She sneaked up on me and made a loud noise—intentionally—and I didn’t expect it and I turned around and stabbed her with a pencil. Three times. Not just once, but I stabbed her _three times_. In the neck. She lived, fortunately, and then I had to go to the school psychiatrist and was restricted where I could go on campus and how often I could leave campus. They probably would have done more if I wasn’t a victor. Then again, I also probably wouldn’t have stabbed her if it weren’t for the fact that I am a victor. The incident was swept under the rug, so to speak, and the girl was attended to by Capitol doctors, and her family paid off. But then they eventually discontinued the psychiatric visits, and adjusted my schedule so that I’d be around as few students as possible. My professors were informed to never leave me alone in a classroom with other students. . . .”

Pitch’s hand tightens on mine. I’ve never told him this. I guess I never wanted to admit that it was an issue at all. The psychiatrist diagnosed me with PTSD, but when I later went back to ask him a question, I found that my records had been expunged and he pretended not to know me. The Capitol had gotten their hands on him, and there was nothing he could do to help me. Not when victors are not allowed to admit that the things that happened to them in the arena have destroyed their minds.

“When I’m with Pitch, I can sleep again,” I continue. “I’m not so jumpy and . . . I don’t know. I feel almost normal again. People can try, but nobody can understand what it’s like to be in the arena. . . . But he has always been there for me, even when our tributes were supposed to be rivals last year. He’s never left me even when everything gets shitty and the victors start alienating each other, or when everything’s so stressful that it’s hard to function.”

These few meager words cannot convey the depth to which I’m appreciative of Pitch’s presence. He’s never abandoned me—and he never will—and he’s always looked out for me. But he’s my friend, too; he’s not some aloof guardian who perches high on a tower to watch for incoming threats. And I know that, in return, I will do anything to protect him.

“I know that you don’t think that our relationship is appropriate,” I say. “If I were you, I wouldn’t, either. But please, I ask you to look past the age difference, and the things we did in the arena in order to live, and the fact that this is so ‘rushed.’ The Capitol gives us a mansion, and they give us material goods, and they tell us how great we are for being victors, but it doesn’t compensate for the things they take away from us.”

My parents look like they want to say something but no words come out. Everything has been drained away from them with the sudden realization that their daughter is beyond damaged, and that sending her away from home to go to school to separate her from her friend/boyfriend only created more problems than it solved.

“All of this just for winning the Hunger Games,” Dad finally comments. He can’t look at either Pitch or me, his eyes glued to the rug. He rubs his cheek and hesitates before he finally looks up at me. “Honey. . . . Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before,” I say quietly, my lip quivering. I draw in a breath and pull myself back together so I can go onward. “I thought that the less you knew the better. I didn’t want you guys to worry too much about me. I realize that it was stupid of me because that means you’ve only gotten information from the interviews and what the Capitol tells you. . . . And it’s not like you haven’t stopped worrying about me. . . .

“I didn’t tell you about university because . . . I’m stupid, I guess? I wanted to do well so I didn’t disappoint you, and I really wanted to make something of myself after I won. Some other victors go to university, too, so I figured why couldn’t I? But I’m not going back, so I guess there’s no need to worry about that part anymore.”

“June, I’m sure that we can arrange something with the university so you can learn from home,” Mom says. “And Mrs. Smith used to be a university professor—I’m sure she could tutor you if you need help.”

“Mom, I—” I hesitate. Technically I’m supposed to be the one who says that I no longer want to pursue university so that I can live happily ever after with my new husband, but I find that the lie doesn’t come forward like it should. This conversation is supposed to be about the truth, after all, and such lies have no place here. “I was informed that I wouldn’t be returning to school. I am required to tell people that it was my choice.”

“What?” Mom asks. She and Dad look between Pitch and me with confusion.

“The Capitol tells us what we have to do, and we do it,” I explain. “They tell us how to behave and what to say and where to go, and if we don’t do what they want, they get angry at us, and, well. . . .” I falter.

“Can you tell them no?” Dad asks.

I shake my head.

“Mr. and Mrs. Sadik—sorry, Alder and May—you are not supposed to know this, but we victors are very highly controlled because we represent a class of people who are meant to represent the Hunger Games,” Pitch cuts in. “For this reason, we often aren’t allowed to make our own choices or, at very least, our choices are limited.”

“What happens if you don’t do what they want?” Dad watches Pitch carefully as though sizing him up.

Pitch hesitates. But at last he says, “The consequences for not following their orders are dire. . . .” My dad furrows his brow and waits for more, so Pitch continues, “If a victor steps out of line, a family member is killed. So if Juniper does anything wrong, they will kill you. Just as they killed my own family when I didn’t do what they wanted me to.”

Mom gasps and her hands go to her mouth. Dad sits back in his chair, breathless. Neither of them expected something like that, and the truth barrels them over.

“I want you tell me that you’re lying,” Dad manages.

“Over the years, I’ve lost enough of my family to know that this isn’t a joke,” Pitch replies. “I’m sorry. I regret that I have even had to tell you this much, and I ask that you let no one know that I’ve said anything at all.”

“I can’t believe this,” Mom breathes. She looks at me for some sort of assurance that we’re just wrong about it all.

“It’s a common tactic they use against victors,” Pitch says. “Over the years, I’ve known many who have lost family and friends, sometimes for seemingly insignificant reasons. The Capitol sees us as both highly valuable and completely disposable. They need us to represent their ideals, but they don’t really care about _us_. But they keep this punishment system quiet so that everybody else—both in the Capitol and in the districts—don’t see it.”

Mom thinks about this for a second and says, “Was your marriage. . . . Something you two wanted? Or was it something they told you to do?”

“It’s something we wanted, Mom,” I reassure her. There’s enough for her to worry about right now, so I don’t bother telling her about why we made the decision or the drama stirred up in the mentoring room that spawned it. “We were planning to talk with you about it, and we definitely wanted to have you guys present.”

“We couldn’t turn down what they offered us,” Pitch adds. “Again, we had to comply with their demands.”

“Comply with their demands over a wedding? Certainly they wouldn’t have killed somebody if you asked to get married in District 7,” Dad says.

Haha. Good one, Dad. I try to not think of Sage who was decapitated for a far stupider reason.

“We weren’t going to risk it,” Pitch says. “I’m sorry it turned out that way, but we’d rather have you alive and angry at us than return to District 7 to find an empty house and fresh graves.”

“You really are serious about that, then?” Dad says quietly.

“Yes,” Pitch says. “I’ve lost both my parents and three siblings.”

My parents sit next to each other on their couch and look at us. They’re wondering what the future has in store for me, no doubt. That by praying and hoping and wishing that I’d survive the arena, they have also prayed and hoped and wished that I would have _this_ future given to me. An hour ago, they were worried that Pitch wasn’t the right person for me and that his history of “promiscuity” was going to be damaging to our relationship, but now maybe they realize that it’s the least of their problems when threats of death hang over my head at every waking moment.

“Pitch, I owe you an apology,” Dad says. “I said some things on the phone that were not appropriate, even without knowing all this. I’m sure what I said didn’t help your situation. I’m sorry.”

Pitch nods. “Apology accepted,” he says. “And I’m sorry as well. I should have said something—talked to Juniper so we could have spoken with you earlier. I forget sometimes how much parents worry.”

Damn, that’s dark. I almost don’t register how messed up that is, my brain catching it just in time before the conversation shifts forward as Pitch continues:

“I can’t blame you for being concerned about Juniper,” he says. “I know that our relationship isn’t quite traditional, and that my history has concerned you.”

“Please, Pitch, I don’t want to put you on the spot, especially not after all of this,” Dad says.

“In the interviews, they mentioned my children, and I’m sure that they had things related to the wedding playing on television as well,” he says regardless. “Those are my kids—three of them—and I have been granted six weeks of custody each year, during which time they will be staying with us in District 7.”

“Pitch . . . how many children do you have?” Mom asks carefully.

“Five,” he answers. “The mothers of the other two decided that they would prefer their kids grow up without me.”

An awkward silence settles in the den. Five children and mentions of multiple mothers. What the hell are my parents even thinking after all of this? Do they still think that I shouldn’t have rushed into marriage, or have they accepted that things in the world of the victor are so messed up that sometimes we make decisions that don’t seem to be “good” for us? I wonder if they realize now that maybe there’s something more insidious behind the story of these children. . . . Still, the questions about Pitch’s commitment to me still linger in the air, and despite everything I’ve been through, my parents still want to ensure that I have married someone who is deserving of me.

Finally Dad looks right at Pitch and asks, “Do you love my daughter?”

Pitch nods. “Yes,” he says.

This seems to put my parents at ease, if only a little. I’m sure they’ll have more questions in the future and that this won’t be the last discussion we have with them. Everything we’ve dumped on them this morning will need to be digested and processed before they can accept it, if they can even do that at all.

“What are your plans from here?” Mom asks.

That’s a great question, but I have no idea how to even begin answering that one. I’m no longer in school, I have to learn a new instrument, and I’m not going to be able to travel out of the district except to go to the Capitol. We have to lay low for awhile, but then maybe Pitch and I could travel somewhere within the district. I’m not sure what we’d do, but it would be better than brooding away inside our mansions.

“We have to figure that out still,” Pitch answers. “Things have changed, and we need to see what our options are.”

“Well,” Mom says, sitting up straight. “I know it might do little compared to what you face, but we appreciate that you talked with us, and we want you to know that we support the both of you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say. She says it does little, but already I feel something shift around inside me. It’s like a weight has been lifted from one part of me, but rather than being discarded, it has been reassigned to weigh down a different part of me. One that is now aware that my parents will be worrying about me even more than ever after they’ve heard this, and I wonder what the hell I had hoped to accomplish by talking with them. I swallow hard and continue, “I hope this wasn’t too much. I’m really sorry.”

“Juniper, of course it’s too much,” Dad says. “But it’s also not something that you or Pitch should have to deal with on your own.”

“You’re going to be even more stressed about me than ever,” I mumble.

“No, having some context has made your behavior and decisions more understandable,” Dad says. “I’m sorry to hear that you’ll no longer be going to school but it sounds like being with Pitch might be more beneficial for you at this time.”

“That’s a statement I never thought I’d hear,” I say.

Pitch laughs. My parents don’t find it quite so humorous. I bet it really wasn’t something they were ever imagining they’d say, either. My interest in males has always been pretty low, often easily overtaken by other hobbies or work; the few relationships I had never lasted long. It probably concerned them because Mom used to say things such as, “When you find yourself a husband. . . .” or “When you have children. . . .” as though that would encourage my desire to find someone and procreate (it didn’t), but that stopped after I returned from the Hunger Games and just getting through life was challenging enough. They probably had absolutely no clue how to handle my unexpected relationship with Pitch—their daughter _finally_ was interested in someone but oh, shit, he’s almost twice her age and he’s done terrible things in the arena and she keeps sneaking off to his house at night—so they sent me away to school because they thought it was the best for me. I’d get an education, I’d be away from this questionable relationship, and I’d have a chance to do something. But little did they know that it only made the situation worse and now they had to prioritize my relationship over my education.

“We look forward to meeting your children, Pitch,” Mom says. “What are their names?”

I’m sure that the television has already told them what the kids’ names are, but Pitch tells her anyhow. Mom and Dad ask a few questions about who these kids are, their ages, which ones live with whom, etc. I chime in to tell them about the buildings we made, and Pitch tells them about laser tag—which spawns a conversation about whether they have seen any laser tag places in District 7—and the conversation no longer focuses on the horrors of being a victor. It’s nice; it’s like things were before we went to the Capitol, but not quite because both of my parents are more comfortable around Pitch now. They were never rude or hostile, but they regarded him carefully and held him at an arm’s length. Now that has vanished as they listen to him talk about Caecilia and Pliny and Neptune. And as much as I don’t want to be a full-time parent to these kids, watching Pitch talk about them is great; he might not admit it, but he’s attached, and his love and concern for them is evident. My parents must pick up on it, too, even if subconsciously, because the more we talk, the more eager they become to meet these children.

I fall silent as I listen to the three of them discuss how much fun the kids had at our bachelor/bachelorette party, and all I can think is that in this moment, I’m grateful I finally spoke with my parents. If this is the way they interact with Pitch now, then maybe it was worth it. I might change my mind later when they harp on me about their concerns, but for the time being, I’ll take what I can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure everyone's had to have awkward conversations with their in-laws every now and again.


	114. Chapter 114

My harp is delivered that afternoon, and we have them put it in Pitch’s house. This delivery confuses my parents, and I just shrug and tell them that I’m changing my victor talent. We convince the delivery people to move the piano from my house to Pitch’s, and that confuses my parents even more since they know that I only play it because they make me. The only thing that they seem somewhat more confident about is the fact that I had a heavy, cylindrical package delivered a few days ago, and they’re certain that it can only be a punching bag. Pitch takes it and hangs it up in one of the spare bedrooms. Then he finds the painting we got from the store on the pier of District 4 and places it in the front sitting room where we can admire it should we ever actually use that room.

Pitch and I head out for a walk after things are situated, and linger on the trails well after when we should so that we can watch the stars appear in the sky above our heads. Then we resign ourselves to returning home, and he takes my hand and we slowly amble back.

We find Bris waiting at the back door of Pitch’s mansion. He sits on the porch steps and watches us silently. If this had happened before we went to the Capitol, I’d assume that it was just him being friendly, but now I know that he delivers messages to Pitch about with whom he is required to sleep. He stands up as we draw near.

“Hi, Bris,” Pitch says to him.

Bris nods a greeting.

“What brings you here?” Pitch asks, though I suppose it’s more of a formality than anything. I dread the thought that Pitch might be called back to the Capitol so soon.

“I’ve been told to give you a message,” Bris says. “Your latest client feels that you are not their type, but has recommended you to a friend.”

Pitch nods. “When?”

“Fortunately, this friend has said it will be a few months, but you’ll receive a call when it’s time,” he tells him.

Does that mean that Pitch gets a couple months off, or is he expected to entertain other clients in the meantime? I look between the men, but neither of them have any desire to fill me in on the details, and I don’t dare ask.

“Alright, thank you,” Pitch says with a touch of relief.

Bris nods and moves away from the porch. He pauses and watches Pitch and me for a moment. “I’m sorry, Pitch,” he says.

“This is good news. Unless I misunderstand?” Pitch says.

Bris shakes his head and sighs heavily. “I’m sorry that you’re in this situation at all,” he says.

Pitch and I watch Bris carefully. It’s like he has more to say, that there’s something on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t manage to get it out of his mouth. Or maybe he doesn’t want to. His apologies aren’t going to make things better, nor are they going to make things worse. Things are just how they are, and none of us can change that.

“It’s not your fault,” Pitch says after a moment. “You’re just the messenger.”

With that out in the open, Bris says, “When you were in the arena, you received several powerful sponsorships that gave you the ability to get ahead. In exchange for sponsoring you, the sponsors expected sexual favors should you live. I knew the price tag associated with them, and I still made the transaction anyhow. So yes, it is my fault. I willingly sold you to these people.”

He _what_?!?

Bris _sold_ Pitch to these people?! He’s the one who started this all?!

I don’t even feel the anger. All I know is that I’m on top of Bris beating the shit out of him, and it’s not until blood splatters on me that the sudden wave of rage washes through me and I realize what I’m doing. I expect to feel Pitch’s hands grab me away from him, but they don’t. Instead Bris throws me off him, and I land on the hard-packed ground with a thud. It slows me down for the briefest of moments. I roll to my feet, but before I can launch myself at the older victor, he slams me to the ground, rolls me over, and pins my arms behind me.

Placing a knee on my back to hold me in place, he hisses, “Calm yourself, Juniper!”

“Don’t tell me what to do after you sold Pitch to the highest bidder!” I shout at him. My cheek is pressed against the ground, but I can see Bris just well enough to know that he’s alternating between glaring at me and glancing over at Pitch. Blood pours from his nose, and one of his eyes is squinted shut. When he looks away, I struggle to get out of his control, but he only tightens his grasp on my wrists. He’s much stronger than I ever gave him credit for.

“If I didn’t accept these conditions, they wouldn’t have sponsored him,” he says between gritted teeth. “He would have died. Do you understand that?”

I twist over enough so that I can look at Pitch. He’s standing where we left him, completely stunned and not at all in the real world. The smallest of breezes could knock him over, but he just teeters in place.

“Pitch!” I call out. I have to shout at him a couple of times before he blinks and looks at Bris and me. His brow furrows and his mouth opens, but Bris releases me at that moment and I scramble to my feet and over to Pitch. He grabs onto me and holds me and buries his face in my hair, and I tell him that everything’s okay and that Bris is an asshole and he’s welcome to punch him, too, if he feels like it.

“Fuck, Juniper. You don’t have to punch everyone you get mad at,” Pitch mutters to me after his composure begins to return. He looks up over my shoulder at Bris, and I turn around so that I can see him, too. The man has his head back, and his fingers pinch his nose to stem the flow of blood. His shirt is soaked. My arms are splattered, and my own clothing didn’t escape, either. Pitch turns back to me and says, “Go inside. Get cleaned up.”

“No,” I say stubbornly.

“Please?”

“Pitch, I—”

“I’m not angry at you,” he says. “But I need to talk with Bris.”

No. I don’t want him to talk with Bris. He’ll end up forgiving him or some shit, and that’s not what’s supposed to happen.

_Then what is supposed to happen, Juniper? Is he just supposed to hold this grudge for the rest of his life and let it weigh him down?_

Pitch kisses my forehead and gives me enough of a nudge so that I know that he means it. I mutter under my breath but bound up the steps and through the doorway into the back of the house. For a moment, I linger by the open window, but I know that if Pitch didn’t want me to be present for his conversation, he meant it, so I disappear further into the house. I pace around for a few minutes before I find a bathroom and clean myself up. Bris’ blood is all over my shirt—front and back—so I pull it off, rinse it, and wander around until I find a laundry basket we actually use. Too lazy to hunt down one of my own shirts, I find one of Pitch’s and throw it on.

Then I plop down on the stairs and wait for Pitch to return.

Twenty minutes pass, and finally I hear Pitch walking around in the back of the house. I don’t do anything to draw attention to myself as I listen to him move around. When he reaches the stairs, he pauses and looks up at me before he trudges up the steps and sits down next to me.

“There’s too much pain in the world for me to hold it against him,” he says before I even have a chance to say anything. “Sometimes as mentors we do shitty things because we’re so desperate to get our tribute out of the arena. . . . We don’t think about what it really _means_ —that we’re selling ourselves or hurting others, that we’re losing bits of our soul with every transaction. Every Hunger Games is the most important Hunger Games: a fresh chance to start over, that maybe this time your tribute will be successful, and so you need to give this tribute a better chance than you’ve given the last tribute.”

“What did you do to get me out of the arena alive?” I ask him, leaning my head against the wall.

He smiles sadly. “More of the usual,” he says. “Many mentors never find themselves in the position in which they need to sell their bodies to fund a tribute, and most who do have to make that decision are completely disgusted by it. But I have enough experience in that department that I’ll do it without second thought if it means my tribute has a chance.”

The idea that Pitch willingly sold himself to others in order to give me a better shot at winning nauseates me, but it doesn’t surprise me. I figured that it was something along those lines. And I was right—he is so jaded by this lifestyle that he doesn’t bat an eye when the opportunity arises.

“Don’t give me that look,” he says. “I don’t _like_ it, but I also know that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing that a tribute died because I didn’t do what I needed to do.”

“But you don’t _need_ to do it, at least you shouldn’t need to,” I protest. But I feel like we’ve had this conversation a trillion times before—or maybe that’s just been in my head, I don’t know at this point—so I stand up and begin heading up the stairs. There’s no damned reason for us to keep going in circles about this bullshit.

Pitch follows after me. I hear his footsteps on the stairs behind me. “Do you want to try out your harp?” he asks.

Nice conversation change. But I guess he doesn’t want to talk about these things any more than I do. Not that discussing my harp is really that much of an improvement. Currently it’s downstairs in one of the front rooms, and I haven’t even bothered to open its case.

“Nope, and I’m not going to,” I tell him. “They’re sending someone out to teach me next week, and I figure that I can have a few more days of freedom.” I reach the top landing and pause for him to catch up so that he’s not trailing me through the house. Not that I really know where I’m going; I just had to move.

“It might be fun,” he says as we walk down the hallway. “Also, where are you going?”

“I figured since I live here now, I should choose a room to be my screaming room. Like what Isolde has,” I say because I can’t tell him that his nonchalance bothers me, nor can I say that I know that one day in the future I’ll be just as chill about it as he is.

He grins. “Fine, but don’t put it near the end of the hallway. It gets a bit drafty and the noises carry down throughout the house,” he says.

“It’s not like I wouldn’t soundproof the room,” I say. I speak like I’m serious, but I don’t know how if I am. I was just walking for the sake of walking, not to actually scope out a good area to release pent up emotions. That said, maybe I _should_ get a screaming room.

We pause in front of one of the spare bedrooms.

“Too big,” Pitch says. “I don’t know if it’s really going to give you the acoustics you want—you might have to empty out one of the storage closets and give it some good padding.”

“I might get too claustrophobic,” I answer.

“Hmm. . . . It might be more beneficial to go out into the forest and scream,” he says as he rubs his chin in thought. “But I think this room might do well for a closet. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. There are so many rooms, I could just turn one into the ultimate closet and put everything in there that I have no need to access routinely.”

We continue walking down the hallway and Pitch points to another room. “What if we made one of these rooms its own shower?”

“Why the hell would we need a shower the size of a bedroom?” I ask. “The entirety of District 7 can fit in the one we have.”

“Why not? If we really got ambitious, we could knock out the walls of several rooms and make the true master bedroom,” he says. He’s completely shitting around like it doesn’t matter that we just had the conversation we did. I look over at him and he raises an eyebrow at me. “I wouldn’t want to sleep in it. Oh, you’re right, it’s probably a dumb idea.”

He’s trying to cheer me up. Distract me. Keep me from dwelling too much on what we can’t really control.

“You could make it into a tennis court,” I say.

“Good thought,” he says. “But then the people below would only hear everyone running around upstairs, so I think I’ll fill it partway with water to muffle the noise.”

Such a dumb idea, but I suppose that’s the point. So we go back and forth as we wander around the second floor of the mansion trying to find new ideas to spice up this place. A room specifically made for the cats we don’t have (we’ll just convince everyone that there really are cats there), a room with a trampoline and nothing else, a second dining room with a rope ladder that leads down to the kitchen, a room with a full-grown redwood tree that somehow does no structural damage to the house, a bathroom with not two but _three_ toilets all facing each other.

This is just too damned stupid. Not the ideas we’re coming up with but the fact that we swing from enjoying ourselves to beating up our fellow victors to once again enjoying ourselves. It is damned stupid. And all I can think of is that harp sitting downstairs and how I’m doing my best to ignore it because it’s just another way the Capitol is forcing itself upon us. Why did I beat up Bris anyhow? Because he wanted Pitch to live and was willing to do anything for it? Because he took advantage of an opportunity that I don’t want to think may be a decision I’ll need to make about my tributes in the future? Because somehow he was a proxy for the Capitol, if only for that one split second in which I lost myself?

I really could have hurt him. It was only because he apparently still keeps himself in shape that he was able to throw me off and keep me off, otherwise he might be in the hospital tonight. Or the morgue.

I can’t live my life like this. I can’t just be barely controlling myself until I snap. I can’t rely on Pitch to keep me calm because that’s not his responsibility. And what happens when he isn’t there to hold me back? What happens if the next person I attack can’t defend himself?

I need to do something. I don’t know what, but I need to _do_ something.

Marrying Pitch wasn’t enough, not when the Capitol has taken away other things from me. I need to figure out something for myself. Something to make me happy. Something to show the Capitol that they might own me, but they don’t own who I am.

“Juniper, you okay?” Pitch asks.

I blink and turn to look at him. “Yeah, I was just trying to figure out whether we really need a room specifically to hold your favorite lamp,” I say. He looks at me; we both know that it’s not what I was thinking, but we go with it.

“It can be a small room,” he says.

“I think maybe we could make an altar for it outside in the forest somewhere,” I suggest. “People might come from all over to worship it after news spreads.”

“Cult of the Lamp. Could be worse. . . . Hey, is that my shirt?” he asks as he tugs at the side of the t-shirt I’m wearing. Obviously it is. It’s far too big for me. “I’ve been looking for that one. Where did you find it?”

“In the third bedroom on the right,” I say as I motion down the hallway some.

“The one that will be the walk-in freezer, or the one that will have all furniture nailed to the ceiling?”

“The latter,” I tell him.

“Well, thanks for finding it. Can you put it back in our bedroom when you’re done with it?” he asks. His hand lingers on my waist and he draws me closer to him.

“I’m actually keeping it,” I say, moving to close the space between us. “It fits well.”

“Yes, but it’s my shirt,” he says. He kisses me.

My fingers gently stroke his beard. “Tough,” I answer.

“I’ve been looking for it,” he insists.

“Life is hard,” I tell him as his hands begin to slide up my ribs underneath the fabric, and I know he’s going to try to take the shirt back from me, so I wrap my arms around his neck to foil his plan, at least temporarily.

“That’s not the only thing that is hard right now,” he replies as he tries to distract me with kisses.

“Geeze, Pitch, really?” I say, but I’m already giving in to his lips on mine, and it’ll only be a matter of time until he does get the shirt back. Not that it was ever his goal.

Yes, I’m going to need to do something besides sit around and wait for my life to be interrupted with the Capitol’s latest scheme to keep us miserable. Not that I’m miserable right this moment—far from it—but the recent conversation with Bris still lingers fresh enough in the back of my mind that I struggle to block it out, and I have to manually focus on the warmth of Pitch’s hands on me and his lips on my neck in order to fully banish it from my mind, if only temporarily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victor life is weird.


	115. Chapter 115

Elm is to be sent to rehab again, so I stop by his place in the morning before he’s carted away. I knock on the door, and he almost doesn’t answer it. I can see him moving around within the house, but finally on the third knock, he gives in to my persistence and opens the door.

He is a mess. Although he’s freshly bathed and his hair is combed and clothes fresh, he has deep purple circles under his eyes and his face is gaunt. He looks almost as irritated as he was when Pitch dragged him back to our apartment after his tribute died.

“I suppose you’re not going to go away if I ask, so come in,” he says. 

“Good morning to you, too,” I say with a touch of irritation. _I’m_ not the one sending him away to rehab. Not that I think he doesn’t need it, but it wasn’t like I was the one who requested him to be transferred to some facility somewhere else since the stint at the hospital pretty much did nothing.

I plop down at the dining a room table where he’s assembled a few odds and ends to take with him. An open backpack has been partially packed, but now he takes items out and starts reconfiguring his allotted space.

“I don’t know why I bother,” he says more to himself than me. “It’s not like they’re not going to take all my shit away from me when I get there.”

“Where are they sending you?” I ask.

“A rehabilitation facility a little east of here,” he answers, eyes still on the task at hand. “Where I will get some physical therapy for an old injury I got when I fell out of a tree.”

Because Elm needs help, but he doesn’t really _need_ help. At least alcoholism might be attributed to something other than one’s time in the arena—not that anyone would ever believe it—but stabbing your classmate in the neck repeatedly isn’t something that can be so easily written off. Hence why they did nothing to help me when it was very clear that I needed a hand.

“How was District 4?” Elm asks suddenly, looking up from his bag.

“It was nice,” I say. “The beach was pleasant, but I’d rather take a forest over an ocean any day.”

He nods. “Sometime I should try to get out of the district,” he says. Then he shakes his head and mutters to himself, “First thing’s first.”

I tap my fingers against the table absently as he tries to wrap up a sweatshirt tight enough that it can be stuffed into the bag without anything else needing to be removed. He has an odd collection of belongings: a few items of clothing, toothbrush and toothpaste, momentos, a notebook, etc.

“I was thinking about what you said when we talked earlier,” I say. “About finding happiness?”

“Yeah?” he asks. “Have you found it?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.

I hesitate, and Elm says, “The room’s clean.”

“Thanks,” I say with a nod. “It’s just that the Capitol keeps throwing things at us. Little reminders here or there that we _can’t_ be happy, or at least that they won’t allow it. And they—oh, sorry _I_ —have decided that I won’t be going back to school. And I have a strange affinity for string instruments. And—well, you know.” I stop myself before I can start ranting about Pitch’s mandatory prostitution thing because that’s not something anyone talks about even if everyone knows it exists.

Elm gives me a wry smile. “What did you like to do, Juniper?” he asks.

“Huh? Do you mean what _do_ I like to do? Because I—”

“No, I mean what did you like to do before you went to the arena,” he clarifies.

I hesitate. It’s like that part of me died off, and I know that it’s what Elm is getting at, but trying to recall who I was and the things I liked to do so long ago proves more challenging than I thought it would be.

“I . . . I liked to draw,” I say. I quickly add, “But I wasn’t very good at it.”

“You don’t have to be,” Elm says, going back to arranging his stuff in the backpack. I watch as he slips a small picture frame inside, though I don’t have a chance to see who’s in the photograph.

“Dad would sometimes take me herping—which is a stupid name for finding reptiles and amphibians, but we used to like doing that,” I continue. “Mom would come sometimes, but she’d fall behind because she kept wanting to read the full entries in the book about what each lizard was, or whatever. She’s much more of a collector—she finds nice rocks, which sounds dumb, but I promise that she has a good collection—and sometimes she’ll stack rocks on top of each other and make them stay there without any glue or string.”

Now that I have a couple of memories dislodged from the cupboard in my mind where I had shoved them long ago, I find that pulling them out is a little easier. Elm lets me babble on about my family and friends a bit. How we used to drive to remote locations in the district just to find some good lizard Dad read about. How we once brought back a 50-lb rock because Mom had to have it in her garden. How I pretended to humor them but I really enjoyed myself. How my friend tried to get me into chess but I didn’t have the patience for it. How I tried to join chemistry club after school but got kicked out for almost blowing the lab up (accidentally, of course). How I never learned to drive, but maybe I could convince someone to teach me.

He listens to this even after he’s figured out how to get his few possessions into the backpack, and then he says, “Are any of those things that the Capitol can stop you from doing?”

“I guess if they really want to,” I say.

“But _are_ they stopping you?” he asks. “Are they going to prohibit you from drawing, or from taking walks with your family? Sure, they might tell you no more chemistry class, or they might deny your request for a driver’s license, but you can find happiness elsewhere.”

I nod and think about it. The Capitol would never be able to stop me from doing things; as soon as they stamp out one hobby, I’d just find something else. It would be tedious, and perhaps they’d finally grow bored with me.

How does Elm manage to tell me this while he himself struggles to handle life? I don’t get how somebody who clearly is very knowledgeable about how to deal with life’s challenges can drink himself to ruin when he can just apply his own teachings to himself. It occurs to me that I know very little about Elm. And I think that’s how he wants it to be so that he can keep us all at an arm’s length.

“Elm, does the place you’re going to allow visitors?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” he says.

Right. Because his family never visits him even here, and it’s not like he has any friends. In all the time I’ve known him, he has been alone here in this cavernous building he calls home. But that wasn’t why I was asking.

“Can I come visit you if they do?” I ask.

He pauses as he tries to zip up the bag and looks at me. For a second I think he’ll say no, but finally he nods.

“Just as long as you don’t give me shit for whatever state I’m in,” he says. His eyes drop back to the bag and he fumbles with the zipper.

“I won’t,” I promise. “When you get there, let me know whenever your visiting days are. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll just assume I can come any time.”

“Please don’t,” he says. He snaps the zipper in place and looks back up at me. “Listen. I appreciate that you dropped by, but I have to get a few things in order before I leave.”

“Sure. Thanks for humoring me,” I say. I’m not sure what the hell you’re supposed to say when you’re wishing somebody goodbye so they can go detox and try to get the alcohol out of their brain, so I settle with a simple, “Good luck.”

I stand up and head to the front door.

“Oh, Juniper?” Elm says before I can leave. I turn around and he continues, “Congratulations on your marriage. It really was a nice wedding.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Before I head back to Pitch’s mansion, I take a slight detour to visit Bris. He’s not going to like seeing me, but I also know that I can’t ignore the fact that I really messed up yesterday. My fist raps against the door, and I take a deep breath as I wait for him to answer. To my surprise, he doesn’t leave me on the front porch and pretend that he’s not home.

Maybe he wants me to see his face so he knows how much I totally screwed him up. I almost don’t recognize him when he opens the door and waves me inside. He has two black eyes and one of them is swollen nearly shut. His nose must’ve been broken and reset because it doesn’t look quite normal. His lip is split and he has a bruise on his jaw. He closes the door behind me and waits for whatever I have to say.

“I’m sorry about your face,” I apologize. “It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have punched you. Or at least punched you less.”

Bris doesn’t look impressed by my apology but leads me into the sitting room. I take a seat and he lowers himself down in the couch opposite me, but my attention is drawn away by the expansive model train set. Small mountains and valleys take up a significant portion of the room where the train tracks bring people from another part of the mansion into the little model town. The train isn’t running right now, so I turn and look back at Bris. For a few seconds, I think he expects me to say something else—maybe grovel a little to seek his forgiveness—but then he clears his throat and starts talking.

“I have been mentoring for thirty-seven years,” he begins. “On-and-off, of course, but almost consistently before Vesa and Pitch won. It’s understandable that what I said upset you, but you’re going to find yourself in positions where you have to make some difficult decisions, and I hope to God that you can find some way to come to terms with whatever you choose.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Bris is still dealing with the ramifications of his decision.

“I’ve known victors who have found themselves making even more challenging decisions that I won’t dare mention because you’d never be able to erase it from your mind if I did,” he continues. “The faster you realize that, the better. You can’t get angry at me for the decisions I made, and I won’t get angry at you for whatever decisions you’ll have to make down the line.”

“Did you tell this to Pitch as well?” I ask. I swallow back the sizzle of anger.

He gives a pained sigh. “No, I didn’t,” he says. “But Pitch also doesn’t have a very prominent record of losing his temper at the slightest inconvenience. Juniper, we all know that you struggle with it, and you need to get yourself under control or else somebody near you is going to get hurt.”

Great, they’re all having conversations about me behind my back. I glare at him even though I know that he is not wrong. How many times have other people had to step in so that I don’t lose it entirely or to clean up my mess so no one else finds out? Bris himself is proof of what I can do if left unchecked.

“It’s funny because Pitch was so adamant that Elm get help, and yet he ignores the little time bomb under his own nose,” he says as he sits back in his chair. I grit my teeth and regret that I didn’t have another few seconds to get in a couple more good punches.

“I’m not a time bomb,” I grunt.

Bris only smiles—or tries to, but ends up wincing.

“Liberty has requested that you help her out a few days a week,” he says.

“What does that mean? She doesn’t need my help,” I say.

“She has a project she’s working on, and she’s getting older so she can’t move around as well as she used to,” he says.

“And I’m the only one who can do it?”

“You should take this opportunity, Juniper. She may be able to help you, or at least give you some tips so you don’t end up dead because you can’t control your temper,” Bris says.

This sound suspiciously like another Capitol “decision” that has been thrust in my lap in which there is only one correct answer. I don’t like it. Bris has been dealing with the Capitol far too long, and now he’s starting to sound like them.

“Do I have a choice?” I ask.

“I’m not going to force you,” he says with a shrug. “But I think you should take whatever help you can get at this point.”

I consider this in silence. I don’t know how sending me off to do Liberty’s ironing or whatever is actually going to benefit me. But what the hell else am I going to do with myself? Tag along after Pitch? Even if I love the harp, I’m not going to want to do that all day. And I already know I’m crappy enough at drawing that I won’t want to spend hours perfecting it, if I even decide to pursue it as a hobby.

“I knew a victor—this was many years ago, well before you were born—who was not so dissimilar to you,” he says. “Unfortunately he was too much for the Capitol, even after they killed everyone he loved. That just made him worse. The coroner said that it took him nearly twelve hours to die of his wounds following the car accident that conveniently happened where nobody would notice his car had gone off the side of the road. Another victor couldn’t figure out how to shut her mouth, so they gave her a lobotomy instead. She was never the same after that, and she ended up killing herself. Our lives are not safe, no matter how much we think that they need us. Control yourself before they control you.”

Fear drips through me at his words. They kill off your family. They kill off your friends. And if you still aren’t broken down enough, they’ll kill off you, too. They care nothing for anyone except themselves, and if you don’t fit into their plan in the way they want you to, you need to be terminated. Martha’s threats seem more real than ever, even if she’s long gone. Despite the fact that I’ve known the Capitol’s violence can touch even us victors, the picture Bris paints terrifies me. Because if they’re willing to kill victors, what’s to say that they won’t kill Pitch?

I study Bris and his battered face. I look beyond the bruises and lacerations to who he is below. The tired, worn man who regards all of us younger victors with such seriousness—he’s seen terrible things in his life as victor. It’s not merely an age difference that sets him apart from us but a difference of experiences. Dead friends, dead family, dead victors. Favors, requests, bargains, transactions. His life has been bleak, and he has had to do things that none of us have ever dreamed about. Has had to make decisions that we hope we never have to face.

“Alright, fine,” I say. I don’t want to admit that his horror stories have worked, but there it is. “I’ll help Liberty out.”

“Good,” Bris says. “She’ll be expecting you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The good news is that I am almost done with this story! I've finished it, but it needs some significant editing before I release it. When will that happen? Maybe today, but likely not.


	116. Chapter 116

The days pass. I try to figure out where I fit in everything now, which is easier said than done, but it’s also not too terrible. Pitch isn’t sure why the hell Bris wants me over at Liberty’s house, but he assures me that whenever I stop dawdling and decide to head over there, he’ll keep himself occupied and won’t pine away in my absence. I mention to him that I might start drawing again, and then that gets him thinking that I’m some great artist even when I tell him that I can barely draw stick figures; he orders me a sketch pad and drawing pencils despite my protests that scraps of paper and regular pencils will do just fine.

I feel like I’m waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not until Pitch comes into the room with the latest book Quintus gave me that I remember that I’m waiting for Quintus to die.

“Turns out that somebody is prophetic,” he says as he hands me the book. I open it and pull out the obituary from where I left it, then look back up at Pitch as he sits down on the couch next to me. “They ran this same obituary in the Capitol paper this morning. Verbatim.”

“So he’s dead?” I ask.

Pitch shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he says. “Either he was giving us a head’s up that his life was at stake, or he wanted to let us know that we shouldn’t believe whatever news we heard.”

“If his life was at stake and he was afraid that someone would kill him, there would be no way for him to anticipate the date, right?” I say. “Unless he wanted to die for some reason?”

“I guess that would be one way to go,” he says. “But I have a feeling that for as ridiculous as he is, he still wouldn’t have any reason to sneak you a postdated obituary if he actually thought he was going to die. So I’m assuming that for some reason or another, he faked his death.”

But why the hell would someone like Quintus want to fake his death? Obviously there’s a reason. My natural inclination is to say that somebody wanted him dead, so he killed himself first because of course the Capitol wants everybody dead. But only as I let the thoughts play out in my head do I realize that there are a few dozen other reasons why he could have pulled this off—anything from escaping a debt to seeking firsthand experience to write his own action-adventure-mystery novel. It might seem overdramatic to fake one’s death to do something mundane, but this is Quintus we’re talking about.

“I wonder what’s going to happen to his bookstore,” I ponder.

Pitch chuckles. “Really, that’s your concern? Books?”

“I figure Quintus can take care of himself,” I say with a shrug. “But those books. . . .”

“Well, I’m sure that they’re in good hands wherever they are,” he says.

The books may be, but I won’t. A sudden flash of fear churns my stomach. If Quintus is dead—whether real or not—then his protection likely doesn’t exist now. I try to pretend that this doesn’t bother me because it’s not like other victors get the luxury of a protecting presence in the Capitol, but the hesitation in my voice betrays me.

“What happens to me now? I mean, he gave me his protection. . . .” I mumble.

“Ah,” Pitch says, studying me. He must now be understanding what, exactly, Quintus’ “death” might mean for me because concern weighs heavily on his brow. Finally he says, “I don’t know.”

Great, another thing to worry about.

No. I can’t worry about it. I can’t worry about all these things! It’s too damned much to deal with, and I can’t let the Capitol bog me down with all this damned stuff they’ve thrown on us.

I sit up straight and tuck the obituary back into the book. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”

This makes him smile, the corner of his mouth turning up for the briefest of seconds. He doesn’t buy it, and I’m sure he knows that I don’t, either. It’s just a few words thrown out there to try to pretend that everything will be alright. He takes my hand in his and holds it without saying anything. Martha might be dead—dead for real—and I might have escaped her, but no doubt there are others who are lined up to take her place with me. Maybe not right this moment, but certainly in the future.

Pitch’s cell phone rings suddenly. It seems out of place in this house, a sound that should only be within the borders of the Capitol, but he hasn’t been without it since we came back. Even I have mine sitting in the bedroom so that I can check it every now and again, though I have no desire to carry it with me; as much as I wanted to chuck it back into the closet and forget about it for another year, I knew that it was more important to keep an eye on it should any of the kids need to reach us.

“Hello?” Pitch asks as cradles the phone against his ear.

_“Hi, it’s Caecilia.”_

Caecilia? Well, Pitch gave her our phone numbers like he did for the others, and she probably misses her dad. It’s only been a few days, but I guess that’s not so weird. Still, I lean casually closer to Pitch so that I can hear her end of the conversation.

“Hi, Caecilia. How are you doing?” Pitch asks, the formality of his initial greeting melting away into fondness.

_“I want to come live with you.”_

My heart stops. Fear rises within me, and I clutch Pitch’s hand in mine. His fingers tighten in return, though he’s forgotten all about me as he stares blankly ahead of him, his brain wrapped entirely in Caecilia’s words. His mouth opens and he hesitates.

“Caecilia, the lawyers decided that your education is—”

The girl bursts into tears. Just terrible sobs that speak of pain and loneliness and despair where no words can convey the same sentiment. They rip into my chest and I huddle on the couch hoping that I can somehow deflect this noise so that the decision we made is more bearable. Pitch’s eyes darken, and his features contort with sorrow as he listens to his kid cry knowing full well that there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

 _“M-mom is—she is—”_ But she can’t get the words out of her mouth because she’s sobbing too hard.

Then we hear something else. I lean in so I can listen better. A door, maybe. Then voices. Screaming. Faustina. She starts yelling at Caecilia to get off the phone, and doesn’t she know better than to use it without permission, and she should really do something else with her life than sit on the phone all day.

Then there’s a struggle and Caecilia’s protests and then Faustina is asking: _“Hello? Who is this?”_

Pitch takes a deep breath. “Hello, Faustina, this is Pitch,” he says.

Faustina remains quiet for a few long moments in which I brace myself for the usual tirade and insults that pour out of her mouth whenever she knows that she has Pitch’s attention.

 _“What the hell is going on?!”_ the woman demands. _“Why the fuck did Caecilia call you?”_

“She wanted to say hello,” Pitch says. He keeps his voice even and steady. I, on the other hand, struggle to keep from grabbing the phone from him and telling Faustina where she can shove it.

_“And you made her cry?!”_

“Faustina, can you please put Caecilia back on the phone?” Pitch asks.

There’s a pause, and then we hear Faustina’s distant voice as she yells at Caecilia: _“What were you doing, you little bitch? What were you telling your father?! Did you—”_

_“Mom! Please! I—”_

_“You love him more than you love me?! Fine! You don’t have to live with me anymore! Go to him! Go live with your good-for-nothing father. See if I care!”_

“Faustina!” Pitch shouts into the phone as Caecilia sobs in the background. “Faustina! Don’t you dare use that language with her!”

But Faustina either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care (more likely the latter) because she continues screaming at Caecilia: _“You’re such an ungrateful little brat. You have never been appreciative of any of the things I’ve done for you! I have slaved away to make sure that YOU get all the things YOU want, and THIS is how you repay me?! You just go crying to your father at the smallest inconvenience! I have never felt so ashamed in my life!”_

“Faustina!” Pitch tries again. We hear the woman say something unintelligible to Caecilia, and a new wave of hysterical crying from the girl. And then Faustina returns to the phone.

 _“You want your child? Take her,”_ Faustina spits. _“She’s just as worthless as you are, so I suppose it’s only fitting. Pick her up at the train station tomorrow when she arrives. I’ll get her an express ticket if that’s what the little princess thinks she needs.”_

“Faustina, be reasonable, please!” Pitch begs. He clutches the phone to his ear and struggles to remain calm. “Let’s talk this out, okay?”

 _“You don’t want to see her?”_ the woman says. She laughs and says to Caecilia, _“Even your father doesn’t want you.”_

“Damnit, Faustina, stop telling her that bullshit,” he snaps. “Put Caecilia back on the phone.”

 _“Fine. Since you’re obviously her favorite parent, I don’t see what harm that’ll do,”_ the woman says.

There’s a pause, and then Caecilia is back on the phone, struggling to contain her tears. _“Hello?”_

“Hi, Caecilia. Juniper and I would love to have you here. We will pick you up at the train station tomorrow, so once you get on the train, call us to let us know what time to pick you up, okay?” he says gently.

 _“Yes, I will do that,”_ the girl replies.

Then Faustina snatches the phone back: _“You’ll no doubt be a better parent than me, at least that’s what Caecilia thinks. I knew I never should have let you meet her—your selfishness has rubbed off on her. Anyway, I should go so I can get the little bitch ready for her visit with her father.”_

The phone disconnects.

Neither of speaks, but the silence that follows that call says enough for us.

I glower at the phone in Pitch’s hand. Anger wells up within me, and threatens to pour out of my mouth in an animalistic wail. I grit my teeth to keep it in, but my hands yearn to grab onto something—anything—and break the shit out of it. I struggle to contain myself, but just barely.

I glance at Pitch. He’s on the verge of tears as he stares down at the device as though he expects something else from it.

Anger causes my body to shake, but I force myself to keep it at bay and not allow it to get the best of me. I have to try, if not for my sake, then for Pitch’s. I have to control myself and be strong for Pitch. He doesn’t need to be worrying about me when he’s torn apart by what’s happening to Caecilia. I bite back the fiery sensation on my tongue and do my best to hold myself together.

“She can’t stay with Faustina. The woman is mad,” Pitch whispers. “But if she comes and lives with us. . . . Fuck. I can’t make this decision. I can’t decide whether she lives in constant abuse or she should face the arena.”

I release his hand and wrap my arms around him, pulling him into me. We sit there for several minutes, and I listen to him ramble about how the hell he’s supposed to handle this situation. I have no good advice; nothing I say will be of any use right now. So I remain quiet and hold him tightly and just listen.

At last he says, “I need to clear my head.”

I take that as my cue to let him go, and I release him from my grasp. He doesn’t move for a second, but once he finally works up the strength, he stands up and pulls me to my feet. He kisses my cheek and says that he just needs a bit of air and that he’ll be back soon. I don’t think he needs me to go with him, and I nod and tell him not to worry about me and that I’ll keep myself occupied. Pitch knows these forests very well; I don’t worry about him getting lost among the trees. But he has disappeared into his thoughts, and I fear that he might lose himself within his own mind. Still, I watch him head out of the room, and I listen as he makes his way through the house. There’s a pause in which he’s probably putting on his shoes, and then the door opens and swings shut behind him.

A restless energy burns through me, begging me to let myself go now that Pitch is out of sight. I struggle to contain it, and right when I think I’m going to lose the fight, a dim voice within me suggests that maybe I should try out my new punching bag. I manage to hold on long enough to find the bag in the spare bedroom and then I release my full fury upon it.


	117. Chapter 117

I find myself on Liberty’s front porch. It seems that over the past couple days, I’ve made the rounds to all the victors—the only one I’m missing is Vesa, which is kind of funny because she’s normally the only one I go out of my way to visit. But I’m not in a humorous mood, not with Caecilia’s situation looming in the forefront of my mind.

Liberty opens the door before I even have a chance to knock. She grins at my surprise, a set of shining white teeth gleaming back at me. How often do you see an old person with perfect teeth? I suppose it’s much more common in the Capitol, but it’s always seemed unnatural to me here in District 7 where dental care is good but not _that_ good.

“Come in, come in,” she says, motioning me inside with one wizened hand. I step into the entryway and she brings me through the house and into the kitchen. She has me sit on a chair at the counter while she hurries around the kitchen asking me if I’d like milk for my tea and whether chocolate chip cookies are okay.

“Liberty, I’m fine. You don’t need to do this for me,” I protest.

She clicks her tongue at me and says, “Nonsense. If I don’t fuss over you, who am I going to fuss over?”

So I watch her as she sets a kettle to boil and pulls out a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies which she places on the counter in front of me. She readies two cups for tea and sets the tea bags in the mugs as she waits for the water to boil. It doesn’t seem right to speak until she has everything in order, so I wait in silence as she putters about the kitchen, finally heading over to the stove to take the squealing kettle off the coils and pour boiling water into the mugs. Steam curls off the top of each mug, and she brings the cups over to the counter. She places one in front of me, and the other she keeps to herself.

“Bris said that you needed help with a project,” I tell her.

The old lady sizes me up, her keen eyes assessing every inch of my face in detail. Once her observations satisfy her, she says, “Bris is just very concerned about you. We all are, but he asked me to work with you to control your temper.”

Obviously everyone knows about my temper, even if they’ve never had to witness it. It’s not like I’m a raging lunatic who will snap at anything that offends her, but word travels easily enough and all the District 7 victors are well aware of my reputation. I won’t doubt that I need to control myself, but it bothers me that everyone seems to be conspiring against me. I wrap my hands around my mug and feel the warmth flow through my fingers.

“So you’re just like the Capitol? Trying to change my image because you don’t like what you see?” I say.

Liberty shakes a finger at me.

“The Capitol isn’t just trying to change your image—they’re trying to change _you_ ,” she says. “I have no problem with who you are. . . . But if you want to be you, you also need to be able to be what they want you to be. Otherwise they’re going to break you down until there’s nothing left but a pile of dust and rubble.”

That sounds great and all, but I’m no actress. I can’t pretend to be loyal to the Capitol while also secretly doing my own thing. Clearly Liberty and Bris must realize this, right? There’s no way they can expect me to be something I’m not when I have neither the talent nor the ambition to fit into a role that doesn’t come naturally to me.

“Now Bris wants me to just teach you how to control your temper and be done with it,” she says as she scoops sugar into her tea and stirs. The spoon clinks against the inside of the mug. She sets the spoon aside and continues, “I disagree. Your temper is a beautiful thing. It’s what makes you _you_. It’s why you volunteered and it’s why you survived. And I’m not sure that Pitch would want a docile wife. No, no, he wouldn’t. You are raw, but you won’t always be. So let’s get you all polished up before the Capitol gets their hands on you and decides that you’re better off as firewood.”

“What’s your plan?” I ask, now somewhat intrigued. People don’t attach positive adjectives to my temper, nor do they speak of it as a desirable defining characteristic. Normally I’m instructed to control myself, to ignore my temper, to pretend that it doesn’t exist—not to embrace it as part of me.

“Oh, I don’t think that we will work on any specific schedule,” she says offhandedly. “We will begin where we see appropriate and let our work take us where it does.”

“Um, I’m not sure I follow,” I say. “What am I supposed to be doing?”

She shakes her head. “Of course you don’t,” she says. “Listen to me being too vague. . . . Panem needs more people like you—people who know what they believe in and where they stand. I don’t want to take that away from you, Juniper, and I think we must be flexible in our work to ensure that you don’t lose these desirable qualities.”

I eye her carefully. I don’t like what she’s saying. It sounds far too rebellious. Panem doesn’t want people like me around; that’s why they keep us under control. So why the hell should that be something we focus on? Liberty takes a sip of her tea only to lower it back down; she shakes her head and adds a splash of milk. I must be misunderstanding her. I _have_ to be misunderstanding her. There’s no way that old Liberty could be suggesting that I do anything revolutionary.

“I’m here to control my temper so I don’t punch Bris into another universe, not to start a rebellion,” I say carefully.

“Oh, honey, you’re not starting anything at all,” she assures me. She passes the container of cookies to me. “Rebellions are fickle things anyhow.”

“But you’re talking about standing up to the Capitol,” I point out as I pick up a cookie. “How is that not starting a rebellion?”

The old woman smiles kindly. “The best way you can stand up to them is to be yourself,” she says. “But you—like all people—need to be your best self. And that is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

I shrug. At this point, I’m not sure why I’m here or even if I _should_ be here. I lower my cookie and set it on the saucer next to the teacup.

“Elm says that you’re looking for happiness,” she says. “Do you know how many victors give up on finding happiness? They just wrap a bubble around themselves and try to get through life the best they can.”

“How can people not want to be happy?” I ask.

She smiles kindly at me and pats my hand. “It’s not a matter of not wanting to be happy, but a matter of not looking for happiness,” she says. “They don’t _seek_ ways to improve their quality of life, not after the Capitol knocks them down. You’re different, Juniper.”

“The Capitol doesn’t like different,” I say.

“No, they don’t,” she says. “Which is why we must make sure to work carefully.”

“Liberty. . . . I’m not an actress,” I admit. “There’s no way I can pretend to be one thing for the Capitol while also being myself. That’s not _me_.”

“I’m not asking you to be an actress,” she says, her hand still on mine. “I think you’ll come to understand in time what I mean, even if I don’t explain it very well now. Juniper, the important thing to keep in mind is that the Capitol seems to give us very few choices: we can do what they want, or they can punish us. But in reality, the options are far greater as long as you know how to find them. It’s a fine grey area between their black-and-white choices, and many victors choose to leave it alone because it can be very daunting. Not you. You might think me a crazy old lady, but I know you well enough to know that you will not settle for black and white. You will explore the grey, and I will make sure that you don’t navigate it alone.”

More options than what they just give us? That seems too good to be true, especially when up against a force whose motives you can’t really identify. Yet there’s something enticing about knowing that there’s more than just two answers for whatever test they give us. Of all the things they’ve done to us, we felt like there were only two ways to go about it: do what they want or push back. How do you manage to identify a third or fourth or fifth route when you feel them breathing down your neck?

“How do you make decisions in the grey area without getting everyone killed?” I ask. I clutch the mug in my hand as though I might raise it to my lips, but I can’t manage to move it more than an inch as I take in everything that Liberty’s telling me.

“That will be your first assignment—think about it,” she says. “Think about how you can make a decision that’s different from the ones the Capitol offers you. Think about what the consequences may be. Then we’ll talk again.”

“And here I thought you just wanted me to pull some weeds from the vegetable garden,” I mutter. Clearly not. Maybe that’s what Bris originally intended for me, but now Liberty has released upon me an entirely new line of thought I never considered.

“We can do that as well,” Liberty says. “They might pump me full of glucosamine, but my body still isn’t what it used to be. But I notice that you haven’t eaten your cookies at all.” She makes a tsk-tsk noise at me, to which I raise an eyebrow.

This conversation isn’t quite one that goes well with food, but I still humor her and take a bite of the cookie. As we finish our tea, she tells me about her garden and how she hopes to get one of the bedrooms repainted and the latest news about her friend’s granddaughter who just graduated from high school. I figure that talking with Liberty is the least I can do if she’s going to be helping me, even though what I really want to do is go out for a walk and clear my head some so that I can make sense of what she told me.


	118. Chapter 118

Pitch and I go out for a walk after a quiet dinner. We worked together in the kitchen to pull our meal together, and yet we barely spoke a word. Of course, the kitchen is large enough that we don’t have to worry much about getting in each other’s way, but each of us was too involved in whatever was going on in our heads to make much of an effort to say anything beyond what was absolutely necessary.

Under typical circumstances, I’d try to dig out of Pitch what the hell is bothering him, but there’s no need to grill him when I heard the phone call myself. Cecilia wants to live with us. Her mother is thrusting her in our direction. We should be happy for this opportunity to save the girl from the terrible woman with whom she lives, but all either of us can think of is that she is one year away from being reaping age. My previous thoughts about how we could have trained her so that she’d be prepared for the arena smack me in the face with stupidity. How could I have thought that this girl would ever survive the Hunger Games? Her name will be drawn from the great glass ball her very first year. They’d want her dead as soon as possible so that she wouldn’t have a chance.

Normally when I walk with Pitch through these woods, whatever troubling thoughts I had in my mind vanish, as though the squirrels themselves came and carried them out of my head. But not today. Today my mind tumbles with thoughts of all kinds, jumbling together in a mess. Pitch, though his hand is in mine and his pace is even and steady, does not belong to this world; his mind is wrapped up in the concerns at hand, and he can’t afford to be in two places at once. We make more racket than normal as our heavy footfalls smash through leaves and brown pine needles that blanket the forest floor.

“Do you want to talk?” I ask Pitch after we’ve traveled a good twenty minutes along the overgrown trail.

Pitch doesn’t answer, and I’m about to leave well enough alone when he jerks us to a stop and turns to look at me.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. She can’t stay with her mom; Faustina is cruel. She can’t come to live with us because she will be reaped,” he says. Although he’s stating the obvious, I don’t interrupt him as he continues. “If she comes here, then she’s going to be sent to the Hunger Games. I told myself that it was better that she lived with Faustina than to go to the arena, but I can’t turn that girl down when she calls me up sobbing hysterically like that. I can’t send her away when she gets to the train station because even if I thought it was appropriate to explain to her why she can’t live with us, she’d never truly understand. She’s eleven years old. There’s no way in hell she would ever understand how real the threat is that she would be reaped. When you’re eleven, twelve, thirteen—you can be scared of the Hunger Games, but it’s not something that really hits you until you’re there. It’s like you have no concept of mortality, I don’t know, but I’ve seen enough kids die to know that I cannot have my daughter be one of them.”

He’s crying, but he gives no indication of wanting to be comforted. And then I realize that he’s mad. He’s mad that he’s placed in this situation and that Caecilia’s fate depends upon how he handles this moment. Does he tell her that it’s too dangerous and send her back with the mentally and emotionally damaging mother, or does he accept her here and provide her a loving home for the few months she has left to live while knowing that her death will be horrible? He takes a labored breath and tries to calm himself down, his eyes searching through the trees that now disappear into twilight for something to provide him relief.

Then he turns to me, and his eyes lock onto mine.

“Juniper, I understand now why you did it—why you volunteered,” he says.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I thought it was pretty damned clear why I took the place of a handicapped girl.

He shakes his head.

“I didn’t get it. Volunteering for a girl who can’t walk is a noble thing, and I understood that aspect of it, or I thought I did,” he explains. “But you didn’t do it because you wanted to be noble and stand up for a girl who didn’t have a chance. The system is unfair, isn’t it? Yes, yes, we all know that. But none of us do anything about it. We just let it go by and we hope that next year will be better. But you didn’t do that—you wanted to do something about it. So you did. I understood that it set you apart from the others and it drew unnecessary attention from the Capitol, but I didn’t really _understand_ , you see? I understand now. God, I understand now. The system is fucked up. I’d do anything to keep Caecilia safe. . . .” His voice trails off, and his attention drifts back to the woods.

The pain is palpable. I rest my hand on his chest and feel his heart pulsating beneath my fingers, a quick and heavy rap against his ribcage. Fear. Panic. Hopelessness. We can’t live like this.

And we won’t.

“Pitch, there could be another way,” I say.

He looks back at me. Apprehension holds back a flicker of hope in his eyes. 

“I can’t help but think of Daphne,” I say. “And I wonder if there are more people like her in the Capitol. She got screwed over pretty hard by the system, and I’m sure she has to be bitter enough that she’d be willing to do something most other Capitolites wouldn’t consider. And if not her, then maybe someone else. There have to be more people like her who detest the things the Capitol does. Maybe we could get Caecilia to live with someone within the Capitol so that she wouldn’t lose her citizenship status. She might even be able to go to a boarding school—you have to be a Capitol citizen to go to one of those, right?”

Pitch takes my head in his hands and studies my expression. His eyes seek something and perhaps he finds it because he nods slowly.

“Joule found Esther a husband who would protect her, right?” I say. “Maybe she could find Caecilia a foster parent who would be willing to advocate for what she needs.”

The more I speak, the more I believe that it might be a possibility. And even if it’s not, at least it shows us that there is _something_ out there different from the two options we see now. It’s not an either-or situation. We could work with the system and figure out a way to keep Caecilia safe from both her mother and the arena.

“Juniper, have I told you that I love you?” he asks.

“You might have mentioned it,” I say.

He drops his hands from my face and pulls me into his arms. I feel his heart beating and his breath on my hair and his hands on my back pressing me into him.

“I’m so damned lucky I married you,” he says.

“It’s not like I wouldn’t have helped you if you hadn’t,” I say, but inside I feel a crackle of happiness as he clings to me. I close my eyes and inhale. He smells of forest and sweat and earthy things and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. I am so damned happy that I married him. Even if it was something that never crossed my mind until we were faced with the accusations in the mentoring room. Even if I never thought that I’d actually love him as anything more than a friend. We didn’t know what the future would hold, but we made a decision for ourselves—a stab in the dark at something we wanted knowing full well that we were getting in over our heads.

“Thank you,” he whispers into my ear.

“For what?” I ask.

“For being here for me,” he says.

“Pitch, you said that you wanted us to enjoy our lives together and not worry about things that we can’t change,” I say.

“Mmmhmm,” he agrees.

“I think there are many things we can change,” I say. He hesitates, and I continue, “We changed our future together, didn’t we? And we’re going to change Caecilia’s future, too—we’re going to make sure that she knows that she is loved no matter what happens. I think there are other things we can change as well. . . .”

“Juniper,” he warns. “Stop.”

“No,” I say. “I won’t. And you won’t, either. If you don’t want a system that’s rigged to send your daughter to her death, then you can’t passively sit by and watch it all come together. We’re going to fight it. I’m not saying that we’re going to kidnap the president or try to dismantle the Hunger Games because I’m not that dumb. We’re going to show the Capitol that we can be happy, the two of us victors, despite everything they give us. And we’re not going to roll over whenever they stare us down.”

Pitch doesn’t say anything. His hold on me has stiffened, and after a second he draws back so that he can look me head on. Only then does he speak.

“I’d like to be happy,” he says, his voice choked. He swallows and says more clearly, “I’d like us both to be happy. If your contempt for the Capitol is going to mean that you live a long and enjoyable life, then so be it.”

I laugh. “ _You_ are the reason I’m going to live a long and enjoyable life,” I say. “My contempt might have driven me to marriage, but I never would have suggested it at all if I didn’t want to be around you all the time. Being married for the sake of being married isn’t my thing; if it was, I would have taken up Esther’s offer to find me one of Maximus’ friends. But I didn’t want that—I wanted you.”

I kiss him, and he holds me against him. His lips linger on mine, but we both know that we have to get back home. It’ll be too dark to see much out here, and neither of us are really prepared to be in the woods after nightfall. And besides, Caecilia comes tomorrow so we need to get one of the bedrooms ready for her. Or maybe not. Maybe she can choose whichever one she wants; it’s not like there is a lack of them.

We start walking slowly. Pitch digs out a miniature flashlight from his pocket and flicks it on. The thin beam provides enough light that we can see ahead of us without tripping but not enough to scan through the woods. The trail, overgrown with ferns and small plants, can still be followed easily enough for those of us familiar with the forest. We don’t say much as we listen to the sounds of the night overtake those of twilight. Things become quieter as animals disappear until daylight, and the nocturnal creatures slink through the darkness with ease.

However, Pitch’s voice cuts through the stillness as he slows down. “I think you left a book out here,” he says. He waves the flashlight beam over a hardcover book sitting on a fallen log.

“I don’t think it’s mine,” I say. Not that anyone else would be traipsing through our forest with books, but I haven’t been out here reading since we got back, and it’s not like me to lose track of my books anyhow. Still, I pick my way over to the fallen log and pause to grab the book before returning to Pitch. He points the flashlight over the cover so I can check it out.

It’s not my book. I’ve never seen anything of the like.

“ _Spiritualism: A Look at the Ghosts Among Us_ ,” I read as I scan the cover. “Weird, that’s—”

I freeze. Suddenly I remember a lunch outing a few weeks ago in which I was forced to dine with people who spoke to the dead. It had been a terrible and awkward meal, but Quintus has gotten quite a kick out of it. Even more amusing to him, I’m sure, was how much the occurrence had rattled me.

“What’s wrong?” Pitch asks.

I glance up at him, the glow from the flashlight illuminating his face well enough so I can see the confusion.

“Quintus,” I breathe.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” I reply. I will have to tell Pitch about it later, but right now I’m too wrapped up in this turn of events. I flip open the cover. Nothing. But there also wasn’t anything written in the cover in the last book, either, so I thumb through the pages looking for an additional piece of paper stuck somewhere unobtrusive.

“Wait, go back a few pages,” Pitch says. I do as instructed. Written in fine pencil in between lines of the text is a string of seemingly random numbers. Pitch squints in the meager lighting and studies it for a minute. As he does, I look around as though I might see Quintus himself somewhere out in the darkness watching us and observing our reactions. Part of me wants to call out, but the better part of me keeps this to myself. Quintus, if he is here at all, might not be the only person watching us right now. Pitch’s finger thumps against the lines and draws my attention back to the book. “This is three months from now. Again, no location. Just a date and a time.”

Three months. That’s a long time. Who the hell knows what’s going to happen in between now and then, but perhaps we’ll be a step or two closer to finding out what’s going on.

“Let’s get back,” Pitch says, his eyes searching through the woods. I close the book and we begin walking again.

Pitch and I finally reach the back porch and slip into the house. He takes care to lock the doors. I’m not sure if he’s afraid that Quintus is going to appear in our bedroom in the middle of the night or if he suspects someone more sinister might be behind this, and I’m not ready to ask him about his thoughts on this matter yet. Instead I follow him up the stairs and to our room, my eyes locked on the book. Later that night when we climb into bed after fixing up a place for Caecilia, I take the book with me and skim through the pages, reading through picture captions and scanning the content. None of it is something I’d choose for myself, and yet I’m drawn to it regardless. Pitch humors me and allows me to keep the light on longer than he would like, and after awhile he starts reading over my shoulder.

Maybe I should feel freaked out by the book about dead people suddenly appearing in the woods behind my house with cryptic messages about a future occurrence. But I’m not. If anything, a buzz of excitement flashes through me, one that I recognize from our escape from Pliny and Neptune’s house several weeks ago: the sense that an adventure rises before us. And what could be more intriguing than an adventure and mystery that has been thrust upon you? It is, of course, better than many other things that have been handed to us without our consent.

“Do you think we’ll be expected to memorize the book before then?” I ask.

Pitch laughs. “I really hope not,” he says. “But reading this before bed is going to make me dream of ghosts and hauntings.”

“Just have the dream ghosts tell your normal nightmares to fuck off,” I tell him.

“Why didn’t I think of that,” he says. He gestures at the page we’re currently reading where a man riding a horse into battle poses heroically for his troops. “This guy looks nice. I’ll make sure that he takes charge of the situation. You can have this other one.” He flips back to a previous page where there is a wizard-like man with a long beard and a tall walking stick.

“Great. He’ll just tell all the nightmares that they cannot pass and I won’t have to worry about them anymore,” I answer.

We flip through the pages of the book assembling small parties of ghosts that will keep us safe from whatever nightmares threaten our sleep. We have a time-travelling band of misfits pulled out of their afterlives to deal with the realm of dreams for us; something I’m sure that a bunch of ghosts—were they actually real, of course—would totally want to deal with. But, of course, absurdity doesn’t matter. Not when we both want the same lady who randomly goes up in flames and decide that she’ll have to travel between ghost parties. Or when we decide that the child who possesses the doll needs to be left behind because who the hell wants to deal with that?

At last we put away the book and turn off the light. I curl up into Pitch, and he holds me and strokes my hair gently. I like the way he tucks the strands behind my ear. It’s familiar. Comforting. Thoughts of nightmares and ghosts and mysteries settle out, and in their place my mind begins to calm. I know without a doubt that we made the right decision. We love each other. We take care of each other. We make up stupid stories with each other. Our happiness is not dependent on what happens in the future but what is happening now, and I could not be more content lying in his arms in this moment knowing that everything is and will be okay. Our lives won’t be boring. People will get hurt no matter what decision we make because we are victors and our title alone means we will never truly obtain peace. But I am damned happy that I have him because I know that I wouldn’t be able to get through year after year of the Capitol’s torture without him, and I don’t know how much longer he’d have been able to hold up against the onslaught of madness without me. This is where I want to be—here, with him—no matter what happens in the future. His fingers brush against my cheek, and I close my eyes.  
  



	119. Chapter 119

Caecilia’s train arrives midmorning, and Pitch and I are there to greet her. Since this is a train that came directly from the Capitol with no stops elsewhere in the district, there are few other people on the platform to greet loved ones.

Pitch shifts from foot to foot as he waits. I look over at him and he flashes me a grin before his attention returns to the train. He might not say it, but he misses Caecilia and can’t wait to be reunited with her again. Far from the neglectful and selfish father that Faustina claims him to be, he spent a good chunk of time last night trying to get things perfect for her so that she wouldn’t think that she was imposing on us or not wanted. It’s a pity that he wasn’t involved in her life from the beginning, but that’s the past and not something he can change. Besides, to an eleven-year-old girl whose mother tells her that she’s ugly and stupid, the sudden discovery of a father who loves her must be a dream come true.

A few people leave the various cars, but it’s a moment before we see Caecilia climb down the stairs and step onto the platform. Once her feet are on solid ground, she looks up and around for us. It takes but a moment before her eyes lock onto Pitch. She bounds over to him, backpack bouncing on her back, and she throws herself at him. He catches her and they embrace. I can’t hear what they’re saying to each other, but I suppose that’s not mine to know anyhow. When she finally lets him go, she turns to me and hugs me, too. I hug her back and tell her how happy I am that she’s with us.

And I am. I don’t want to be a parent, and I certainly have no idea what the hell I’m doing, but Caecilia is part of our lives and I wouldn’t want to change that. We’ll figure out some way to keep her safe from the Capitol. It might hurt, but it’ll be better in the long run to have her away from us during the school year than to have her sent to the arena. And Faustina might want to claim her back, but we’ll fight her; we’ll do whatever we can to keep Caecilia safe.

Caecilia walks between us chattering about her train ride. We find Pitch’s car in the lot and climb inside, Caecilia talking like we’ve never heard her talk in a never-ending stream of words. Pitch explains to her that we don’t have a lot of things to keep her occupied but we’ll go to the store soon enough and she can pick out what she needs—a real store, he tells her, and he’ll even go with her—and she grins at him. But her attention is pulled away to the forest around us, a thick expansive world of greens and browns that contradicts the digital domain of concrete and technology of the Capitol. She wants to know what every type of tree is and how we can know where we’re going if we can’t see anything besides trees. This gets a laugh out of Pitch and he promises that he will show her around.

When we get home, we’ll go over to my parents’ house to have a late breakfast so that they can meet their new granddaughter. Once we’re back at our place, we’ll show Caecilia around and get her situated. I’ll even let her use my punching bag if she wants. Or my harp. I think, maybe, she would be good at the harp; I’ll ask her later if she wants to learn with me because I’m sure it won’t be a problem to order her one of her own. And I would honestly appreciate the company.

So this is our future, at least for the time being. Things will change—I will change—as they always do. Happiness, contentment, adventure—feelings that had been lost in the past couple years and I thought would never again be part of me—are finally starting to resurface. The Capitol will not break me down, and it will not break us apart. They can try, but they will never win.

**THE END**


	120. Thank You & Notes

Many thanks to everyone who stuck with this to the end. It’s the longest thing I’ve written to date, though I really hope that I have no need to write anything longer. Hopefully it wasn’t terrible. I mean, if this were a published novel, it would be terrible, but for a nearly 300,000-word book written in two months, I imagine it’s halfway decent. I had fun writing it, and I hope you had fun reading it.

Thank you to those who commented on this story as of the time of its finish date: Brook1, darth_nell, heathy_chandy, Jannkat, Meadowlark, Megashark, Miss_Haki, Supersage171, and Unicorn7. I always enjoy your comments, and I check this website far too often to see what you guys have to say about my latest chapters. Honestly, if it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t have written such an expansive and detailed world. I know that there are also many people who read without commenting, so thank you to you, too, for your support. Special thanks to fluentinfandom796 who left a very kind review of my works in a “Alternate Universe Hunger Games” series bookmark. I have no way of thanking you since I can’t reply directly nor is there a messenger feature, but it made me very happy to come across that out of the blue.

I’d also like to thank my spouse who did not read a single word of this damned novel but still asked me about it and listened to me ramble more than I should have in order to work out some kinks in the plot and get through a few episodes of writer’s block. Even if most of the suggestions involved everyone dying multiple times. (The plotline with Quintus’ obituary was not my idea. But my spouse originally wanted the obit to be delivered in a rubic’s cube. Like literally none of my characters would ever have figured that out. And then Quintus was supposed to be shot through the head right after giving Juniper the book and still somehow have lived completely unscathed.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t normally write romance, so this was a bit of a big endeavor for me. I do want to thank you guys because without you, I probably would have stayed well within my comfort zone and never bothered to explore this aspect of Juniper and Pitch. Maybe I would have said they got married, but I wouldn’t have tried to actually write out the development of their relationship. So I appreciate that you guys were interested in reading more of their story and encouraged me to try something new.

A few notes:

  1. Juniper and Pitch stay together, at least as far as I can see. They are not allowed to die or get divorced because I never want to write another wedding again. Ever. But honestly, I really like them together, and I do want them to be happy that they’re with each other.
  2. On that same note, Esther and Maximus get married. No, I will not be writing a story about that.  
  

  3. I hesitate to say too much about the situations with Caecilia/Faustina and Quintus because I know that it’s inevitable that I’ll write about these characters again, and I don’t want to spoil anything or back myself into a corner by writing stuff here. But I will say that I’m glad I had the opportunity to explore these characters because I really liked writing them.  
  

  4. Quintus is a wonderful character. So the truth about how he came to be is that I didn’t think I could write a book heavy in non-con scenes between Juniper and Quintus, so I decided to flesh him out more and write a backstory. He ended up having some really interesting thoughts/motivations that took him in a completely different direction than he had originally been written for “The Year After” and will likely be explored in a future work.  
  

  5. A magician may never tell his secrets, but sometimes an author will. Elijah managed to race his go-kart because he was receiving verbal instructions via headphones. He ended up getting stuck in the section of the track that had a lot of turns because the instructions couldn’t keep up with all the changes.  
  

  6. I regret that I didn’t get to explore more about what was happening with Caligula, but something had to give in this story. Essentially my spouse said, “Caligula?! You couldn’t have chosen a better emperor?!?” so I decided to make Caligula get sick and go insane. Obviously he has to not be too insane because he returns for the 146th Hunger Games at least.  
  

  7. Daphne’s a neat character and will be returning in the future. I have plans for her. Horrible plans.  
  

  8. What happens to [REDACTED] that is briefly mentioned in “A Collision of Past and Future”? Does it involve Juniper? That’s for a future work, I think.  
  

  9. Killing Martha was one of the most satisfying things ever. As I’ve previously mentioned, I don’t normally kill off antagonistic characters simply because they’re bad people. But this one was needed.  
  

  10. "Caecilia" is pronounced "kie-KEE-lee-a".  
  




If you have further questions, let me know and I can answer them to the best of my ability.

On the topic of the next story:

I already have my first couple chapters written for the 147th Hunger Games, so I’ll have that up today most likely. (The hard part is always finding a title.) It will be . . . different. Yes, I mean that in a terrible way.

However, because the less conventional storytelling technique I’m using will prohibit me from writing at my leisure, I might start a second story in the meantime. Anything in particular you guys want to read about? (I need a bit of a break from this Juniper/Pitch/children/Quintus storyline, but I’ll more than likely pick that up in the near future.) The only thing is that I can’t write past the 147th Hunger Games because I don’t know what the outcome will be. Whatever I choose, I do have to be careful. As you can imagine, this takes up a considerable amount of time, and I miiiight have neglected other things in life to write. So I’m not sure what my pacing will be for the next stories. Then again, I have very little impulse control, so heaven only knows.

Anyhow, thank you again for hanging on through this and for reading it all.


	121. Character List

This is a list of characters in this novel. I admittedly did not do a very good job keeping up with the non-HG ones, so I'll have to edit more in later.

**There are spoilers in this list.** So if you haven't read the novel or you're partway through, proceed with caution.

Victor List (victors mentioned in this story)

Fjord McGlough --- District 4 --- 141st Hunger Games  
Juniper Sadik --- District 7 --- 140th Hunger Games  
Rikuto Cord --- District 6 --- 139th Hunger Games  
Esther Hugh --- District 8 --- 138th Hunger Games  
Gill Tide --- District 4 --- 137th Hunger Games  
James ___ --- District 5 --- 136th Hunger Games  
Isolde Lee --- District 1 --- 135th Hunger Games  
Hammer Williams --- District 1 --- 134th Hunger Games  
Elijah Asher --- District 5 --- 133rd Hunger Games  
Lady McClure --- District 10 --- 131st Hunger Games  
Elm Cottonwood --- District 7 --- 130th Hunger Games  
Terra Woods --- District 12 --- 129th Hunger Games  
Bran Grist --- District 9 --- 127th Hunger Games  
Zinc ___ --- District 3 --- 126th Hunger Games  
Pitch Yassen --- District 7 --- 125th Hunger Games  
Hero ___ --- District 4 --- 124th Hunger Games  
Jericho ___ --- District 1 --- 122nd Hunger Games  
Freya ___ --- District 2 --- 121st Hunger Games  
Vesa ___ --- District 7 --- 120th Hunger Games  
Demeter Sawyer --- District 11 --- 119th Hunger Games  
Ferrer ___ --- District 2 --- 118th Hunger Games  
Tethys ___ --- District 4 --- 117th Hunger Games  
Cronus ___ --- District 1 --- 115th Hunger Games  
Calico Smithers --- District 8 --- 112th Hunger Games  
Gamma ___ --- District 3 --- 110th Hunger Games  
Joule Leonard --- District 3 --- 109th Hunger Games  
Savera ___ --- District 6 --- 106th Hunger Games  
Bristlecone ___ --- District 7 --- 105th Hunger Games  
Phoenix ___ --- District 12 --- 102nd Hunger Games  
Unspecified/older: Liberty (District 7)

Named Tributes

Ardor --- District 1 male  
Europa Vitner --- District 1 female  
Valora --- District 2 female  
Marlin --- District 4 male  
Cove --- District 4 female  
Auburn --- District 6 female  
Sage Thornethorn --- District 7 male  
Wisteria Smith --- District 7 female  
Brier --- District 12 male  
Winter --- District 12 female

Character List

Alder Sadik --- Juniper’s father  
May Sadik --- Juniper’s mother

Leander --- District 7 stylist  
Tasha --- District 7 stylist  
Daphne --- District 7 escort / former biologist

  
Martha Woolylamb --- arena designer  
Quintus Laurentinus --- Juniper's "admirer" and bookstore owner  
Faustina Vitus --- previous “client” of Pitch  
Caecilia Vitus (11) --- daughter of Pitch and Faustina  
Tatiana Corvinus --- previous “client” of Pitch  
Plinius Corvinus --- husband of Tatiana  
Pliny Corvinus (12) --- son of Pitch and Tatiana  
Neptune Corvinus (8) --- daughter of Plinius and Tatiana  
Arial --- previous “client” of Pitch  
Garamond (?) --- son of Pitch and Arial  
Clarus Rhovanion --- gamemaker (third year)  
Francisca Verissimus --- gamemaker (for forever)  
Patricius Snell --- scientist for the Hunger Games (geology department)  
Jim Bob --- arena engineering department  
Billy Bob --- arena engineering department  
Richard Robert --- arena engineering department  
Petronilla --- Pitch’s former escort when he was a tribute  
Maurus turibius --- gamemaker (first year)  
Therasia --- Hunger Games advertising and promotion  
  



End file.
